


Only in Dreams

by TullyBlue



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dreamsharing, F/M, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Insecurity, Internalized Homophobia, Kurosaki Family, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Parallels, Pining, Platonic Soulmates, Romance, Romantic Soulmates, Unrequited Soulmates, canon has been slow roasted and carved for the juicy bits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TullyBlue/pseuds/TullyBlue
Summary: Brother, she had called him, but he spent the entire meal acting like she was a ghost. Eating with the twins, he can’t even imagine being that cold to his sisters. Yuzu’s laughter brightens his day and that admiring glint in Karin’s eye, that he only catches every once in a while, means the world to him. The so-called brother in his dreams makes Ichigo’s skin crawl. Everything else, though, he wants to see more of, to know more about, to understand. Old, wood floors, a spacious room, flowing black robes, and thoseswords...
Relationships: Arisawa Tatsuki & Inoue Orihime, Hitsugaya Toushirou/Kurosaki Karin, Inoue Orihime & Inoue Sora, Ishida Uryuu/Sado "Chad" Yasutora, Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo, Shiba Ganju/Yamada Hanatarou
Comments: 28
Kudos: 85





	1. Ichigo/Rukia I

**Author's Note:**

> Dream/perception sharing soulmate AU - when you sleep, you see through your soulmate's eyes, either their dreams or what they're doing in their waking hours. The stronger your reiryoku, the stronger your connection. If your soulmate is in another realm, you have to have a large amount of reiryoku in order to connect to them.
> 
> Set roughly a year later than canon with everything pretty much the same in the beginning. The Karakura kids are all 16 rather than 15 (except Chad, a few months older than the rest, at 17). Rukia is Ukitake's lieutenant.
> 
> Chapter POVs will rotate through characters/soulmate pairs.

The first time Rukia has a dream that is not her own, she’s already been dead for close to two centuries. She’s a lieutenant of the Gotei 13, sleeping in her little room off of Captain Ukitake’s quarters. Startling awake, she sits straight up and has enough presence of mind to remember where she is. Her breath catches in her throat. She is going to scream, the gigantic Hollow ( _the Grand Fisher,_ she knew, when conscious) going to kill the woman, her heart going to beat out of her chest.

She muffles the scream as well as she can, lips and teeth scraping across the rough fabric of the pillow she shoves her face into, body deflating against her futon when she is done. Ukitake still hears her. He knocks, knuckles light against the screen door. He accepts the excuse of her usual nightmares. With a sorrowful smile and sympathetic eyes, her captain closes the door and returns to his own rooms. She listens to him hesitate outside her door before turning to leave. They know she did not step into this role easily, hasn’t taken to it as easily as her sweet captain frequently tells Byakuya she has.

When it comes to Byakuya, she tries to tell him as little as possible. She does not like to waste his time. She usually feels like she’s wasting her breath, as well.

Rukia flops over on her futon, skin sweat-slick and heart pounding. She feels like the fish Renji tried to steal from that vendor’s barrel that one time, so many years ago when all she knew was hunger and belonging, only for him to drop it in the street right in front of both the vendor and his stall, where everyone could see it gasping for breath and flopping around in the dirt. She remembers the way everyone around them stopped what they were doing to look at the fish. A unanimous agreement that it was out of place, and out of place enough to be stared at. Rukia tosses an arm over her eyes and is glad for the darkness of her room. She is glad no one can see how very out of place she has become.

It isn’t unusual for one’s soulmate to end up in another realm, with the constant flow of souls from one to the other. She knew hundreds of people during her time in the Rukongai that dreamed of the living world. Most of them did not go on become Shinigami, however. There could be a conflict of interest – love over duty, soulbonds over oaths. The Academy was quick to ask about the kinds of dreams potential students had; even rumors of students dreaming of the Human Realm could result in expulsion. It is not forbidden, but it is not taken lightly.

There is no reason to draw attention to herself, she decides. She refuses to disgrace her brother in this way. There is already the reality of her undeserving rank, the easy way she moved through the Academy once Byakuya gave her his last name, her lack of social graces and beneficial friendships. The dream plays against her eyelids and she is resigned. There are still many hours left in the night. Rukia curls up on her side, wraps her arms around herself, and prays for the soul of the woman in her dreams.

* * *

“My only son! My oldest boy! Our late bloomer has blossomed, my darling Masaki, and what a beautiful sight he is!”

“Dad, it’s too early to yell at Ichigo,” Karin yawns. Facedown on the table, Ichigo agrees. It isn’t even six in the morning, but as soon as Isshin had guessed the reason for his son being awake so early, he had woken up the girls and started hollering about a celebratory breakfast. Somewhere on the way to the kitchen, he stops to collapse against Masaki’s portrait and weep.

“I am yelling _about_ your older brother! He’s finally started to dream. What a glorious day! Aren’t you just ecstatic to meet the love of your life, son? Besides, you have a new sister to look forward to meeting, Karin!”

“Daaaaad,” Ichigo says, lowly. In the kitchen, Yuzu starts giggling. It might be the only good thing to come out of his morning, so far. He should have stayed in bed.

“Or brother! You never know!”

Ichigo closes his eyes, fights back the urge to punch his father, and sighs. “I swear to friggin’ god,” he mutters against the cool wood of the tabletop. Across from him, Karin slams her glass down. He winces and sits up straight, glaring at his family. Why are they all so _weird_? Yuzu exempt, at present time.

“ _Are_ you excited, Ichigo? It’s been so long, and I know all of your friends started dreaming already, so you must feel some kind of relief.”

He eyes Karin, sees the genuine curiosity in her eyes. Neither she nor Yuzu are old enough to dream yet; it usually starts at fourteen, sometimes a little before, sometimes a bit after. Ichigo, at nearly seventeen, has been classified as “an unusually late bloomer” since his last birthday. It doesn’t draw as much attention as his hair, probably because he didn’t advertise it, but he could see her point. Keigo might shut up. Or maybe he would get worse...

Ichigo shrugs, unsure. “I guess so.” A solemn face, looking away, flashes through his mind. _Brother_ , she had called him, but he spent the entire meal acting like she was a ghost. Eating with the twins, he can’t even imagine being that cold to his sisters. Yuzu’s laughter brightens his day and that admiring glint in Karin’s eye, that he only saw every once in a while, means the world to him. The so-called _brother_ in his dreams makes Ichigo’s skin crawl. Everything else, though, he wants to see more of, to know more about, to _understand_. Old, wooden floors, a spacious room, flowing black robes, and those _swords_...

He doesn’t say much about his dreams over breakfast. His dad and Yuzu ask him a hundred more questions, and he doesn’t really have any answers. Ichigo shovels his food into his mouth to avoid talking about his dreams. How could they understand them if he didn’t?

Ichigo keeps quiet about his dreams for a month, and then two, and then it’s almost summer break and everyone is so busy talking about their flights and visits and plans, that no one really bothers to ask about them anymore. Chad and Mizurio are the first to let the subject drop. They’re easy to please, and Ichigo admires that. Keigo is the last to let it go, but he’s been dreaming of the beach again and trying to figure out exactly which one it is, so he is occupied enough. He doesn’t talk about his dreams any more than necessary for three whole months, and then he sees her, and he gets a sword, too.

* * *

She knows of three seated Gotei 13 members with living soulmates. Hanunobo Ogido, Eighth Seat of Division Four – banned from travelling to the Human Realm. Kira Izuru, Lieutenant of Division Three – voluntarily banned from travelling to the Human Realm without being escorted by his captain. Soifon, Captain of Division Two – that was all she knew about that, really, and few dared to press the matter.

Her options are limited and she isn't comfortable with any of them. Granted, she can’t think of anyone she is comfortable talking to about something like this. So, Rukia tucks her questions and anxieties away, hides them under her Lieutenant badge and Kuchiki mask. Only her captain seems to notice a difference. His gentle prying and attempts to ply her with compliments until she spills her worries do not work, but she appreciates them. Captain Ukitake is truly a good man, she knows, kind and intelligent, compassionate, and also very happy to go between his own quarters and those of Captain Kyoraku, dreaming together every night. She thinks this will be something that stays with her, alone, until the death of her soulmate. Until she dreams of the streets of the Rukongai or nothing at all.

Then, she stumbles onto a surprising scene.

It is late, she knows, but she wants to finish the report Captain Ukitake asked for before she retires for the night, and all she needs is a signature from the Tenth to confirm their side of things. The door to Captain Hitsuguya’s office is ajar, but she raps her knuckles lightly against the wood anyway. There is noise from within, and she cannot see but recognizes the low rumble of the Tenth’s Captain, as well as the hushed voice of Lieutenant Hinamori Momo, of the Fifth. They seem to be arguing, and she thinks to turn away.

“-don’t wanna dream, Momo, so get-”

Rukia freezes, as if she has called upon her shikai. She knows the feeling of her body dropping below freezing temperatures, the cold rigidity it gives her movements, the veins of ice in her body and breaths of frozen mist in her lungs. She stays still and listens. There is the sound of struggling from within, grunts from Hinamori and a snarl from Hitsuguya.

“Shiro-chan,” the lieutenant sighs, and the familiarity of it is almost enough to make her leave, but her curiosity is far too great. Her heart has frozen in her chest and her feet to the floor. “Give me the sake.”

It is well known that though the Second Seat of Division Ten enjoys drinking, her superior is against it and frequently scolds her for _over_ doing it. What could drive him to drink? She waits, hopes tied together with thin strings.

“I’m just trying to get to sleep,” he says, quietly, with something like a slur, but not quite.

“That is not what you’re doing, Shiro-chan, you’re-”

“Leave it be, Momo,” he snaps. Rukia startles at the sound of the bottle slamming down. She has never seen Captain Hitsuguya anything more than annoyed, but he sounds as if he’s starting to get there. Surely, he wouldn’t attack Lieutenant Hinamori. Everyone knows they grew up together; she is one of the few people he tolerates being around, after all. “I just don’t want to dream.”

She hears that sadness, the dead note nestled under the word _dream_ , and holds her breath. It can’t be true. She must be projecting her own emotions onto the situation, twisting the words so that they mean what she wants them to hear, because surely the Captain of Division Ten can’t be avoiding sleep for the very same reasons she has been.

Hinamori sighs, again, but different. The noise is more sympathetic, though no less frustrated. “They can’t be that bad, Shiro.”

Rukia feels the ice around her heart shatter at the noise that comes out of the crack of the door. It is louder than anything else so far, even the slamming of the sake bottle, and it hurts, somewhere much deeper than her ears, somewhere that should not be affected by noises made by a captain largely unfamiliar to her. Something between a strangled laugh and distressed cry, something desperate and angry and hurt. She felt something close to that every time she woke up. Did he?

“If they were bad, Momo, I wouldn’t mind, so much.”

She leaves in a flash of Shunpo, flees back to her own barracks and goes straight for Captain Ukitake’s door. She is asking if he is inside before she knows what she’s doing, what she plans to say, why she came here in the first place. But where else would she go? She hadn’t made friends in the Academy as easily as Renji, comfortable drinking and fighting with his bloodthirsty comrades in the Eleventh. Her brother was no better an option. She could feel the coldness radiating in her direction from Sixth anywhere in the Soul Society. She does not belong at the bar, laughing with Renji and his friends, or at the Kuchiki compound, existing in silence with her brother.

He answers almost immediately, a wide smile coming to his face when he looks down at her. She can see that he’s retired for the night, his haori hung up on the coat rack beside him, and her face flushes. Making a nuisance of herself again, it seems.

“Rukia, good evening. What can I do for you?”

Her lips feel like they’re sewn shut, staring up at Captain Ukitake with wide, violet eyes. She trusts him, she does, and this secret she vowed to keep had been burning inside her for so long, now, that it felt like the only thing she could do was spill the embers of herself at his feet. Rukia takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She is going to tell him, and she is going to feel better, and Captain Ukitake will know what to do and what to say to make that happen. She knows this.

She opens her eyes, and sees a flashy kimono hanging right next to her captain’s haori. It is a softer silk than the assigned Captain’s haori and it is pink and it belongs to a spiritual pressure on the other side of the door that she failed to notice before now. Rukia’s lips fall open and she starts to speak.

“I am sorry for disturbing you, Captain, but I wanted to let you know that when I went searching for him, Captain Hitsuguya was attending to other business and unable to sign the report. As soon as he has a free moment tomorrow, I will try again.” She bows her head. She feels dizzy, and thinks that she may actually vomit ashes at his feet when he puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry about that, tonight, Lieutenant. You should have stopped working hours ago. Take some time for yourself every now and then, rest.”

Her cheeks flush, and she nods like she does every time he says something to that effect. “Of course. Have a good night, Captain.”

He stops her from leaving with only a look, and there is a crack in her Kuchiki mask. She needs to flee, find a dark corner to remove it and repair delicate ceramic. Her feet do not move. Captain Ukitake’s eyes are so kind, and the intelligence in them is different from the arctic knowledge lurking behind her brother’s gaze.

“Is that all you need, Rukia? Would you like to come in?”

She has not forgotten the splash of pink beside stark white, or the spiritual pressure of the person likely lounging on his couch right this instant. She has not forgotten that broken noise from Captain Hitsuguya’s office. She has not forgotten that when she dreams, she dreams of making dinner with two young girls, correcting annoying teenage boys on their misconceptions, leaving flowers and toys and kindness for spirits with and without gravestones to mark their place. She has not forgotten the face of the woman killed by the Grand Fisher; she had seen it too many times to forget.

“No, thank you, Captain,” she says, smiles brightly, waves him off. “I’m going to take your advice and get some rest, I think. Have a good night.”

She flees from the mingled relief and suspicion in his keen, emerald eyes. Rukia spends a long time bathing and an even longer time trying to get to sleep that night. She does, finally, and dreams of writing an essay. There is music and the patter of rain, melancholy in her chest as she taps her pencil against the edge of the table lamp. She wakes up with her stomach rumbling and the taste of strawberry cake on her tongue. Her soulmate and his family are celebrating the coming of summer, an evening of sweets and laughter and shouting. Rukia wipes the rain from her face and goes about her duties.

Captain Ukitake summons her before midday, but she has already heard the news. She has a mission in the Human Realm. He encourages her when her face falters, and tells her that it is not a transfer, she will be back in a month. He even offers to tell Byakuya of her departure so that she won’t have to bother him. She does her best to act pleased and thankful. She arrives in Karakura town, reassuring herself every second with thoughts of how unlikely it is she would see her soulmate in this one insignificant town during this one short month.

She is wrong, and she is never more grateful to be, and she pays for everything. The Hollow is stronger than she expects. The building it leads her to is strangely familiar. Rukia is shaken at the sight, but does not panic until she sees the two little girls. She knows them. She has dreamt of them so many times, knows their laughter and their voices and their smiles.

Rukia plunges her sword into Kurosaki Ichigo knowing full well that he is her soulmate. She wraps her hands around the hilt of her zanpakuto, looks into a face she could draw from memory on a young man she has never seen before, and gives him her powers. She has never felt this close to death. As she watches Ichigo emerge a Shinigami, his zanpakuto enormous and his spiritual pressure crushing, Rukia has never felt more alive. Her heart soars. It is right there, in front of her, sword in hand. He is going to protect those he loves. He is going to win. He is going to save them.

What she could not do, he will. Her powers will help him; his instincts will guide him. She smiles.

* * *

The sword is probably his new favorite thing. And not just because of how badass it is, honest. Ichigo relishes the power that comes with it, his newfound abilities to keep his family, his friends, and even the stray souls he meets safe. He likes the power. He likes killing monsters. He doesn’t even mind Rukia hollering at him from the sidelines constantly, shouting things that may or may not be useful. The fights feel good. He feels good. 

He feels strong and capable, for the first time in so many years. He saves his sisters and Rukia. He saves his friends. He could not save his mother, and learns that it both was and was not his fault that she died. He finds it in himself to forgive his constantly changing reflection, his unalterable younger self.

Ichigo knows that none of this would be possible without Rukia. In the few moments she wasn’t trying her best to drive him up the wall, he finds himself staring at her without knowing what he’s feeling. It feels like what he imagines the soul chain feels like – except she’s holding the other end. Or maybe, it’s attached to her, too, in the middle of her chest, and that’s why those big, violet eyes linger on him with so much concern. He’s been trying to figure it out since she stabbed him through the chest and all he could think was, _I’ve never seen eyes that color before_. He trusts her. She understands how badly he wants to protect his family, and why. Ichigo wants to protect her, too, wants a lot of things he can’t put words to. He doesn’t get it.

After over a month of this, this unfounded certainty in his chest, he realizes what’s going on. His dreams had stopped, point-blank, the before week Rukia showed up, and he figured that was weird but whatever, it happens. They returned, no problem, a couple days or so after she appeared, so he knew his soulmate wasn’t dead. He never saw the old school buildings or the people dressed so strangely, that he now knew were Shinigami. The first night back all he dreams of is the man he only knows as Brother. They sit, without speaking, in a spacious room while sakura petals blow in from the open door. By the end of the dream, the room was full of flower petals and it felt as though his mouth was full of blood, from biting his tongue. He wakes up and spends the day thinking of how to ask Rukia about having a Shinigami as his soulmate.

He asks, and she answers.

“Any member of the Gotei 13 who begins to dream of the Human Realm is either limited or strictly prohibited from entering your world. Most of the time, they are banned from travelling to this realm until the death of their soulmate, after which it is possible that they’ll be able to find them in the Soul Society.” She looks down, eyes half-lidded and far away, a look that Ichigo knows well but has never liked. He likes Rukia here, with him, not carried off by some memory of stupid rules in a stupid place. A scowl comes over his face and he doesn’t bother to stop it. “Seated officers of the Court Guard Squads are dissuaded from finding their soulmates, if they aren’t already among the Thirteen Divisions.”

“And if their soulmate finds them?”

She regards him sharply, her eyebrows arching in a way that says she knows he’s talking out of his ass, knowing nothing about the Soul Society. “If an officer’s soulmate were to start their search in the Rukongai, they would have to have heard rumors of the officer being a part of the Gotei 13, or seen them in action. Unless they were lucky enough to end up in a district near the Academy, their best chance would be randomly spotting the officer on patrol.”

 _They won’t find their soulmate_ , he thought. _I won’t find my soulmate_.

But he knows a Shinigami, a real one, unlike himself, and she has to know plenty of others. It is on the tip of his tongue to ask about the little details he could remember – a silver-haired man with kind eyes, an icy feeling in his veins whenever he saw his soulmate’s zanpakuto used in battle, the stoic man called _Brother_. Ichigo glances down into those pretty, purple eyes, and bites his tongue. It doesn’t sound like all Shinigami are like Rukia. He couldn’t imagine half of the faces he had seen in his dreams associated with something like her ridiculous drawings or hot-headed temper. The conversation fades away as they continue to walk home.

Yuzu calls him for dinner as soon as he steps through the door. Upstairs, he’s sure Rukia can hear the commotion and is getting ready to retire for the night. He sits down at the tables and envies her solitude until his sisters distract him, regaling him with a tale of how they found a limping puppy outside the school and brought him home for their father to treat. Isshin shouts about how proud he is of his kindhearted daughters until the plates are being placed in the sink. He excuses himself to his room, sneaking a bit of food for Rukia, and finishes his homework with her words still on his mind.

He sits on the conversation for two full weeks, which gives him fourteen more days to tell himself that he isn’t falling in love with some smart-mouthed, too-short Shinigami. His dreams vary like never before and that doesn’t help one bit. Gone are the long hours of paperwork and zanpakuto drills, listening and notating meetings about patrol hours, combat supplies, and something called _kido training_. If he doesn’t spectate a dream that he knows is not his own, the only thing Ichigo can see is pitch blackness. He starts to worry his soulmate has fallen into a coma or something strange like that, and wonders if he could find a way to casually ask Rukia if Shinigami are susceptible to head trauma.

Ichigo never gets the chance, because he never really takes it before he figures out what’s going on. He and Rukia have just finished off another Hollow, one that didn’t seem too tough until it required Ishida distracting it in order for Ichigo to finish off, and she goes right to bed the second they get back home.

It isn’t unusual of her, and it isn’t unusual for Ichigo to lay awake. So, he does, thinking about the battle. He doesn’t notice falling asleep, the same way he doesn’t notice his breathing getting deeper or his eyes closing. One minute, he is focused on replaying the details in order to see where he was too slow, too hasty, and the next, he is dreaming of Brother, walking in front of him, with another man at his side.

He does not recognize the man, with his high ponytail of violently red hair or the cocky coil in his muscles as he moves. The dream does, and tells him that he is sad that these men walk before him and not beside him. He feels it reverberate in his chest. The emptiness of the feeling grows as more cherry blossom petals begin to fill the air. Ichigo, when he is awake and remembers his dreams, has started to hate the flower. He sees them so often, and they always bring this sadness with them.

The path seems endless. His feet start to hurt and the two men get further away. Ichigo tries to pick up his feet and run. They do not get any faster. He opens his mouth to shout. Nothing comes out. The distance continues to grow, and he will be buried under the sakura petals soon if he doesn’t hurry up, and neither of the assholes in front of him have bothered to turn around even once!

His hands itch to reach for his zanpakuto, to challenge the men ahead of him and clear these stupid flowers out of his face and his path. Instead, they reach up and wipe the tears from his cheeks. A sob tears through his chest and he chokes on the petals. Suddenly, it is clear to him that he cannot go forward and that was never the path he should have taken to begin with, so he turns around. His hands claw through the ocean of petals, thicker where he has slowed down.

When he turns his back, the two men grow angry and do the same. Ichigo breaks free of the sakura petals with a gasp, and fear bolting through his chest. He should be following them, as close on their heels as possible, and he _turned around_? What sense did that make?

The fear fuels him, and Ichigo finally picks up his feet and begins to run. He tastes sweet, sweet freedom on the wind. The smell of cherry blossoms begins to fade away. It all lasts for one perfect moment before he can hear the sounds of pursuit; he knows the men are chasing him. He has run away and they won’t allow it. He belongs at their side, silent and obedient.

He is not fast enough. Something – the dream recognizes it as a zanpakuto but he can’t believe that, not when it curves around him with those joints and those teeth – snakes around to cut off his path. His feet freeze to the ground and he stops. The thing withdraws, slinking back behind him. On each side of him, one of the men circle around to stand side by side in front of him.

They both stare at her with disappointment and dispassion, mixed together in that unfamiliar dream logic, and he starts to cry again. The redhead has a pair of shades obscuring his face, but Ichigo can hear him scoff. Brother stares down at him.

“Where do you think you’re going, Rukia?” he asks.

Ichigo does not remember waking up the same way he does not remember falling asleep. His eyes are open and he knows something that he should have realized so much sooner and he is untangling himself from his blankets and crossing the length of his room in one long stretch of legs. He slides the door to his closet open and she is awake. She is staring at him with panicked, purple eyes. Ichigo scowls at her, furious that she has been keeping _this_ from him, on top of everything else, and wraps his fingers around her scrawny ankle, his sister’s pajamas a couple inches too short to cover it.

She yelps and kicks at him, but he has younger twin sisters and an idiot father and, now, Shinigami training. His reflexes prove to be too good and he wraps his arms around her, drags Rukia from the double stacked futons she’s put on top on his dresser and into his lap. Ichigo’s legs fold beneath him like he is kneeling at the foot of an ancient deity, hands reaching like he is begging for their favor. She’s crying and chanting his name like a prayer, shaking her head.

One large hand pushes those dumb bangs out of her face, tilts her chin up so she has to look at him with her weird, beautiful eyes. He wipes away her tears. He doesn’t listen when she starts trying to talk about what they can’t do and what the rules are. At this point, he’s had to have broken at least one. So, what’s one more? Rukia will worry about it enough for the both of him no matter what he does. This chain between them finally makes sense, and it is better than anything he had thought to hope for when she smiled at him and he smiled back, that first time. She gives him strength; she is teaching him how to fight. He will protect her. She’s his soulmate, and that’s what he does best.

He falls asleep with two of the knobs on his dresser drawers stabbing into his back and Rukia in his arms. She has given up on talking him out of it, her cheek pressed into the soft fabric of his pajama top as she listens to his heart beat steadily. His chin is propped on top of her head. His hands hold her like something precious, even in sleep. She closes her eyes and they dream together.


	2. Karin/Toushirou I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Toushirou had mourned Shiba Isshin. Now, he was dreaming about him._

Unlike her idiot brother, Karin Kurosaki knows how to keep her mouth shut. Sure, it’s weird that it took him two extra years to start getting his dreams, but it was way fucking weirder that she got hers two years early. Who started getting their soulmate dreams at _twelve_? No one, that’s who. So, she didn’t tell anybody. No big deal. 

Her dreams start out pretty boring, anyway. The first night, she dreams of a steady hand filling out some kind of reports in a stuffier style of writing than she was used to, with an ink pot and brush, of all things. She wakes up thinking that was a stupid thing to do for hours on end, and doesn’t even recognize the dream for what it is. Next, she dreams of watching the sun set over a river, hands and mouth sticky with watermelon. There is an emotion surging through her that makes the beautiful view and the sweet fruit both turn rotten, a longing that feels almost like loss, and she opens her eyes to find her pillow wet, an emptiness in her chest that doesn't belong to her. 

It is that sadness that causes her to recognize the dream as someone else’s, and she realizes what's going on, exactly. Karin spends the day telling herself that she is not worried, not terrified, not unsure of everything. She spends the day unwilling to express any of that. Instead, she sulks, and yeah, okay, it isn't her finest moment. But she has a lot to process. So, what, if she spends the day with her scowl darker than usual and her tongue sharper? Ichigo does it all the time. 

And she could see him, after she starts dreaming, running around in those same robes that she sees everyone in her dreams wearing. Well, mostly everyone. There was the lazy guy in the pink, and plenty of people with white coats or no sleeves on their outfits, for some reason. She doesn't know what Ichigo is up to. She doesn't want to explain why she needed the answers, either. So, she keeps her mouth shut. 

Her dreams aren’t, like, bad, or anything. She doesn’t like the endless hours of paperwork whoever she is connected to spends their time doing. And the redheaded lady they’re always yelling at gives her a bit of headache. She calls Karin’s soulmate _Captain_ and pinches their cheek, gets swatted away just like she would do to Isshin, so sometimes her dreams are funny. There are good ones, too. Karin wakes up the morning of her twelfth birthday with the taste of watermelon in her mouth and none of the misery in her heart. There is a lightness instead, and a soft voice beside her with a shabby view of a bustling courtyard fading from her mind. That's one of her favorites. 

The dreams aren’t anything she can’t handle alone. As long as Yuzu doesn't catch her crying in her sleep or something embarrassing like that, it’s fine. Karin makes up a dream to share at the breakfast table every now and then; her family never asks questions or acts suspicious. All of Ichigo’s weird behavior is chalked up to budding hormones and teenage rebellion. Her father and sister don’t seem to see what she sees, or they don’t say anything. Karin keeps her mouth shut. 

* * *

It is a mistake that anyone finds out at all. Hitsuguya Toushirou starts dreaming and the dreams do not belong to him. He closes his eyes and expects memories of his childhood with Momo and his granny or perhaps discussions with Hyorinmaru, instead he sees a young girl he does not know, a boy scowling down at him with amusement in his eyes, a white coat stretched across broad shoulders that he feels at though he should know. He opens his eyes and knows he cannot sat anything, to anyone. As a Captain of the Gotei 13, and the youngest one in history, a point often thrown around more like an insult that a compliment, he could not allow this to affect his duties. Toushirou could not let himself be hindered by this. 

The first few weeks are fine. He makes it through them without any hint that something has changed, that he’s been given, in death, what is to be the greatest gift of life. There is no time spent imagining his soulmate. He doesn’t care what she looks like or does for fun or thinks of when she’s alone. He cares about finishing his paperwork on time, dragging Rangiku out of the office before he gets started for the day, receiving reports from his subordinates that do _not_ say they messed up. 

He is busy. He does not waste time thinking about his soulmate. 

Until he dreams of another Soul Reaper, he feels as if his new dreams are nothing more than that. He sleeps, he dreams, and he goes about his day normally when he is awake. Every once in a while, a detail will come back to him that he had forgotten with the confusing haze of waking up, such as the shape of some kid's glasses as he looks daringly across a soccer field at Toushirou or the song the smiling girl he always sees likes to sing as she washes the dishes. He catches himself humming absently a few times and dismisses the shaky feeling in his stomach when he does. That feeling is nothing, compared to seeing the face of his captain staring down at him as soon as he opened his eyes ( _not his eyes, not his captain anymore_ ). Toushirou wants to haul his fist back and punch Shiba Isshin square in the jaw. 

“Back the hell off, Dad!” a growling, drowsy voice yells. 

The pale hand he watches emerge from the blankets in his peripheral swiftly balls into a fist and swings. It doesn’t hit him in the jaw, but his soulmate has a right hook hard enough to break a grown man's nose. He wakes up laughing, tears in his eyes, unable to breathe. Rangiku bursts through the door to his room as if he was howling in pain. She has Haineko halfway unsheathed, silver eyes alert. 

She looks at him like she can’t believe what she’s seeing, hand still on her sword. He drops his head into his hand and laughs harder, hears his Lieutenant sheath her zanpakuto and close the door. A hesitant step towards him, but he’s still laughing, so hard that his stomach starts to hurt. The watery eyes turn to watery cheeks, tears streaking down them like the blood running down Captain Shiba's chin. Toushirou gasps for air, gets enough that laughing some more doesn’t choke him, brings his hands up to cover his face. 

Rangiku kneels beside him. Hands in her lap, she sits there in her dark green jinbei with her calm, silver eyes. He only brings himself to look up at her once, in the middle of this fit, and is startled to see that his lieutenant looks sad. She reaches out to him, and he is so tired and still laughing so hard and so very confused, he doesn’t smack her hands away. 

His laughter is fading, finally, settling down into short chuckles and small giggles that he will forever deny emitting. There is a reassuring hand smoothing across his shoulder blades. His face is streaked with tears. He is not sure how much of them are from laughter, how much from sorrow. 

“Rangiku,” he gasps, stomach aching and lungs starving for a full breath. It doesn’t cross his mind not to tell her. Captain Shiba may have been his mentor, as much as a man such as that can be considered for such a serious occupation, but she had been his partner for many years before that. They took him in – when he was all sharp tongue and round cheeks, too-serious even at half the age of a normal recruit – and taught him everything he knew. Isshin and Rangiku were the older siblings he had never had in life, more tenacious and trouble-making in their roles than Momo. 

They had been a family, until some years ago. It was said their captain fell in battle, during a mission to the Human Realm, and yet there he was. Toushirou had mourned Shiba Isshin. Now, he is dreaming about him. 

She listens. She does not dismiss him as simply having dreamt of their captain or having drank too much before bed. Rangiku knows he is not the type, and he is honored that she still believes in that even when she learns of Isshin's betrayal. Rankigu listens, and then she urges him up and out of his room, and they are both sitting in their office with her extensive alcohol stash’s contents, in the matching jinbei Momo had given them last winter. He is too exhausted, too lost, to consider refusing. 

They drink. His throat burns, but so do the words he speaks of Isshin and the words he does not speak, the ones regarding his soulmate. Rangiku yells, quite a lot, at first. She is like slamming a fist on the table, all vibrating anger and visible instability. It lasts for an hour, and then she is sad. Whisper quiet, eyes cast to the floor, all that long, cascading hair shielding her face. 

It is nearly dawn when she says what he has been thinking. He hadn’t doubted that she would, not really, so it is no surprise. The surprise comes at the plural she uses, though immediately after it is out of her mouth, he agrees. 

“He should have told us, if he was leaving.” 

The dawn greets them with warm, shining rays of sun and the sounds of birdsong, as it does nearly every morning. He blinks at the light that continues to grow and spread through the room. It fills the cracks under the doors, finds a way to enter the compound through the smallest crevices and slits. He looks to his lieutenant, curled on the couch, only just getting a bit of rest. The buzz of the alcohol is fading, fogginess gone from his thoughts, movements purposeful and composed again. Toushirou thinks rain would better suit the day. With a sigh, he collects the bottles, throwing out the empty ones and returning the rest to their various hiding spots. 

When his office is clean, he returns to his rooms to change and prepare for the day. Rangiku is sleeping deeper when he goes to start on the morning paperwork. She has curled further into herself, an arm wrapped around her middle and the other pillowed under her head, face half-hidden by the thick fabric of her pajamas and her thick, copper hair. He rolls his eyes and huffs under his breath. Toushirou retrieves his ink pot, drags out the blanket he keeps hidden in the supply closet, tosses it over his sleeping lieutenant, and slides the door shut quietly behind him. 

On his way to the court yard, he stops the first of his subordinates that crosses his path. He knows he must look strange – carrying half of his desk’s contents, hair more haphazard than usual, sleepless smudges beneath his eyes – and he does not care. The unseated officer, his name is Jun-something, Toushirou thinks, bows his head and rushes off to do as he is told. Toushirou continues, finds a nice spot in the shade and away from the damn sun to do his paperwork. When he is finished, trying to track down someone competent enough to run an errand to the Second, he passes by his office and gives the _Do Not Disturb_ sign a satisfied nod. 

* * *

The first time she fights one of those monsters for herself – the ones she knows Ichigo chases after, the ones she had seen in her dreams only a handful of times in the last six months – Karin is terrified. She can’t hide it, is too focused on trying to keep herself and Ichigo’s giant friend alive, feels fear in every beat of her heart and gasp for breath. The fear is sharp, and stinging. She pushes it through it the same way she does cramps and exhaustion and anxiety in a soccer match. 

She has no idea where these things keep coming from. She’s pretty sure they have something to do with Ichigo, or he has something to do with them, but he isn’t around when this one crashes into her soccer game. It’s just her and Ichigo’s enormous, foreign friend. He can’t even see the thing, but it chases him into their school yard, crushing the very ground it stomps on. She is caught up in it, tries directing him so he won’t get smashed to bits, watches as he’s swatted like a fly. Karin tries to get her idiot friends to leave. She grits her teeth, knowing they don’t _know_ what idiots they’re being and wishing they could just trust her, but that isn’t how it goes. They're gonna get hurt is they stick around, though. So, she scares them off. 

Better they live, running off and spiteful towards her, than die. She will see them at school tomorrow, if she makes it out of this herself, and they can be pissed off all they want then. Karin tells herself they would thank her, if they knew. It doesn’t help much. 

The big guy is inhumanly fast, inhumanly strong, and then just plain _inhuman_ , with that weird transformation that goes on with his right arm. It freaks her out a little, but she doesn’t think Ichigo and that girl are totally human, either, with what she’s seen, and if Ichigo isn’t, and that's her _brother_ , and _she_ can see the same monsters and sense their presence before she can even see them- 

In the end, the monster is defeated and this strong, lame friend of Ichigo’s passes out from overdoing it. She scoffs, infuriated by the same stupid hero complex she sees in him that her brother has been radiating for months now. It’s even worse when she comes back and he’s gone, and her idiot father thinks this was all some big cry for attention that she definitely doesn’t want. Karin goes home pissed off and helpless to do anything about it, which only fuels her anger. She finishes her homework in a silent rage, breaks the lead in her pencil enough that it’s nearly half eraser by the time she’s done sharpening the damn thing for the last time, and tells Yuzu she’ll do the clinic’s closing clean-up by herself if she covers for her until she returns. 

“Well, alright, Karin, but don’t be late! Where are you going this late, anyway?”

“Not far. I won’t even leave the neighborhood.” 

Yuzu relents at this, though her mouth still pouts when she says, “Okay. Be safe, Karin.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

She walks out the door, hands in her pockets and scowling at the ground. She knows its kind of late, but Ms. Arisawa is usually pretty cool with odd hours. Her job in the city requires a weird schedule, though Karin isn’t really sure what she does, and she still manages to make it to all of Tatsuki’s important matches. There’s one coming up in a couple of weeks, so she knows Tatsuki will literally jump at the opportunity for a spar, no matter how far below her level Karin is. She never kept up with the dojo lessons like she should have. It was a lot more fun on the soccer field, where she could stretch her legs and dart past her opponents, rather than grappling with and circling around them. 

The anger is still churning under her skin, though, and she has to do something. She wishes she could talk about it, almost, and Tatsuki wouldn’t be a bad person to confide in. She was smart and strong; she stood up for herself, and Karin knew the secret behind her soulmate. It would be fair, to tell her. Tatsuki had told her about Orihime the very first time she dreamed about her, when she came around to the clinic with bloody knuckles, asking for Ichigo when he was out painting his fists to match, probably. 

Karin remembers seeing her hands scuffed up or scabbed usually, but never openly wounded before, and the sight has her opening her mouth and telling the girl to come inside. She was pretty young, not even in the double digits, but Tatsuki listened to her. Her dad had taught them enough by that age to clean up Tatsuki’s hands. No one saw them walk through the house and into the clinic; no one was around to stop Karin from sitting her down and pulling out the extensive Basic First Aid kit closest to her, one of several around the house and clinic, and treating her wounds. No one was around when she opened her mouth and told little Karin all about how she got her first dream and found out she was one of the unlucky few with an unrequited soulmate. She hadn’t yet met Inoue Orihime at the time, knew her only as a name that came up between Tatsuki and Ichigo in discussion sometimes, but she knew the Inoue girl had been the first one in Ichigo’s class to start dreaming. She had already found and lost her soulmate. 

Ichigo tells her the story, when she asks a few weeks after Tatsuki appeared on the doorstep with busted knuckles and left with a secret between them, about Orihime’s soulmate. She can’t imagine loving her brother any more than she does now, but she imagines that if he had taken her away from such an awful situation, then turned out to be on the other end of her soulboud, she would probably love him even more. And then, to lose him... 

Their situations are nothing alike. Tatsuki hasn’t told anyone about her soulmate because everything is so messed up. She’s Orihime’s best friend and biggest defender, has been for years. They’re inseparable. But her bond isn’t matched, and Orihime’s soulmate died when they were both so young, and Tatsuki is adamant that she neither wants to push her into anything or mess up the friendship she does have, with her soulmate. Karin keeps her mouth shut because she doesn’t know what’s going on, doesn’t want to draw attention to whatever the hell is going on. 

They’re in the same boat, and they both like to hit things instead of handling them, so it works out. She’ll go to Tatsuki’s, get her frustration knocked out of her, and everything will be alright for the rest of the night. She doesn’t know what her dreams have in store, of course. That’s a worry for later. 

Her walk to the Arisawa house is cut short when she sees her brother at the other end of an alley, heading in the direction she’s leaving. He’s dressed in those black robes, that short girl by his side, and Karin is following them before she even decides to. They don’t notice her. She’s tapping away on her cell phone and he’s got his hands behind his head, staring up at the sky. Karin darts to the end of the alley and peers around the corner. They continue down the street and make a left towards the clinic. 

She waits a minute, and then traces their steps. When she appears around the corner, they’re gone. Her steps falter and she looks around, brow furrowed. After a moment, Ichigo walks onto the sidewalk from some hidden corner, dressed in his school uniform, shoving a stuffed toy into his backpack. The girl steps out behind him and they keep walking. 

There’s no way he could have changed that fast, so she has no idea what just happened. It’s also pretty weird that Ichigo is carrying around a stuffed animal, but whatever. He was weird. Karin follows them back to the Kurosaki residence, where they both linger under the lamplight outside of the clinic. She’s tucked behind a stone fence, small enough the corner pillar shields her from view. 

Karin doesn’t know a lot about this girl Ichigo is always with, but she has a pretty good hunch that she’s the reason he suddenly started fighting monsters and dressing like a wacko. She popped up at the right time. She’s a little weird, from what Karin’s seen, and formal. It makes sense that she would know something about all of this. The way she orders Ichigo around makes it look like she knows what she’s doing, at least. 

She’s sick of being confused, and ready to ask for some damn answers. Jaw set, shoulders back, she steps out from behind the stone pillar she hides behind, puts a foot forward to cross the street and demand her brother tell her everything he knows. He’s never lied to her before all of this, so she hopes confronting him will be enough to draw out the truth. 

Karin doesn’t make it any further than that, never even really leaves the clinic even though she walked out the door half an hour ago. She is stopped short by the sight of her brother snatching the phone out of the girl’s hand and shoving it in his pocket, taking her now empty hand and dragging her close. Her leans down and kisses her. The girl stomps on his foot, but she also grabs his shirt and kisses him back, so Karin doesn’t dart across the street and start kicking his ass. 

The sight of her brother kissing someone is... gross, mostly, but also weird, because Ichigo isn’t really that affectionate. He is fine with the twins, of course, though he couldn't recall him hugging anyone besides herself or Yuzu. She could probably blame that on their dad, since he confuses affection for attacks, apparently. Ichigo shoves away from hugs, with most people, and smacks away any teasing hands the same way she does. 

Kissing seems to be the exception, or maybe the girl is the exception, she thinks, when they pull away and he just leans his forehead against hers, even though that definitely has to hurt his back. Ichigo’s smiling, a little bit, and she darts back behind the fence before she can be seen. They start arguing right away. Their hands go into the air and into fists onto hips, their lips turned down and eyes rolling at each other. Like the kiss had never happened. 

She’s seen it, though, the truth that she wasn’t even looking for in all of this confusion. Whoever the girl was, she was Ichigo’s soulmate. He wasn’t the type to date casually, especially not since he started dreaming. Karin knows he has turned down the few girls brave enough to chat him up, drawn in by the mysterious bad-boy thing they thought he had going on or the tragic story behind his pissed off face and bad reputation. Her brother acts all tough, but every one of the Kurosakis takes the idea of their soulbonds seriously. Her parents had been soulmates, after all. They all grew up, for a time, surrounded by the love of such a bond, and then with the reality of the loss of it. Love was not easily given, by their family. 

And she is sure, standing there watching them yell at each other, that Ichigo loves this girl. His expression a few moments ago said that plainly enough. She sees it in her mind, mirrored on her father’s face, the same way she sees it every time he throws himself at the giant portrait of her mother downstairs. 

Ichigo waves a hand at the girl, cutting her off, and says something. She sort of shrugs, looking annoyed, and shoves him away when he ruffles her hair. He turns to go into the house. Karin waits until the door is shut, waits like the girl does until he is out of sight. She turns around at the same time Karin steps forward again and their eyes lock. 

Karin watches the flash of surprise and then panic, lightning fast in her weird, purple eyes, and then the sweet smile she greets Karin with appears. Good. She isn’t wrong, then. The girl acts like nothing has happened, smiles and waves and turns to leave. 

Not happening. Her anger is adrenaline now, and Karin knows she can outrun this girl, no problem.

“Hey!” she calls. “Wait up!” She will get her answers, or at least some of them.

* * *

“Can I help you?” 

“Yes, Toushirou, and you could start by opening the door.” 

He puts his head back on his desk, where it had been before someone had approached the door and asked if he was inside. If he’d been paying attention, he would have noticed that it was Momo to begin with, and not answered. Now that she knows he’s here, she isn’t leaving. That cold tone told him enough. He closes his eyes. 

The door opens despite his silence. She walks over to him with that self-righteous anger in her steps, a quiet little fury that builds up behind her eyes and in the tenseness of her shoulders. He isn’t getting out of this, then. Should have known. Ever since she found out about his dreams, and his new preferred method of being unable to remember them, she had been harping on him about it. Momo never suggests that he tell the Captain-Commander, thankfully, but she berates the drinking. Consistently.

It is what tips her off, after all, when she comes around to his personal quarters late one evening, teary-eyed over a spat with a new officer in her squad. She smells the sake on his breath and knows that he doesn’t go out drinking the either the captains or the lieutenants, despite invitations from both parties. Momo is perceptive. She knows Toushirou better than anyone, including Rangiku. She drags the truth from him in under an hour, and hounds him since to stop deflecting his dreams with drinking. He ignores her. She doesn’t understand, she can't understand when her soulmate is right here and they are happy as can be.

He falls asleep out of pure exhaustion the night before and dreams of Captain Shiba and a smiling woman, who inspires a deep affection and deeper longing in his chest. They are dancing, in a room where the floors were covered in toys and the walls plastered with displays of childish artwork. They are in love. They are so in love it shines through their eyes, through the dream, through the memory, if it is what Toushirou thinks. He watches them, sitting beside a very young girl, clapping their hands together. He wakes up with tears in his eyes. 

There is no room in his life for things like that to affect him. He doesn’t want to know what his former captain has done, doesn’t want to see the happiness he has built for himself on the foundation of his deception. The sorrow that follows him makes him think that Isshin was not allowed to hold on to that happiness. He is not comforted by the thought, finds it harder to swallow than the truth of Isshin’s supposed death. 

Momo starts to chastise him right away. She is worried, he knows, but does she have to be so damn annoying about it? He does not shirk his duties as a captain, does not drink until he is sure that he can turn in for the night, does not drink enough to be oblivious to everything around him. Only enough to dull his memories of the dreaming. Only enough to not think about it. He isn’t an idiot. He knows what he’s doing. 

Except he’s so distracted by the argument and already halfway to where he wants to be, a nice plateau of hazy, honey-thick thoughts between the beginning and ending points of his sobriety, that he doesn’t notice someone outside the door until they’ve left, startled Shunpo alerting him to their presence. He and Momo freeze at the same time. 

He waits all night for another one of the captains, or maybe a member of the Stealth Force, to come collect him. Withholding information that can affect the outcome of a battle, and therefore the safety of the Soul Society, is treason. He doesn’t listen when Momo offers him empty reassurances. Brushing off her apologies is harder, even though he does that without annoyance or impatience. He knows it was an accident, that if anything is brought to light, it is his fault. 

“If Lieutenant Kuchiki informs anyone of what she has heard, I will be the one to deal with the consequences. It is my soulbond in question, my soulmate in another realm. It is my problem, Momo.” 

Kuchiki Rukia leaves on assignment to the Human Realm the next day. He learns she is to gone a month and suffers every day for that period of time. The drinking stops as soon as everything goes to hell, so he dreams of his soulmate every night for that month. He watches her stitch up a man’s arm, yell at the lanky, orange-haired teenager who turns out to be her brother, kick a soccer ball around by herself when the boys she asked to play with her turned up their noses. He dreams of monsters he feels but never sees, making rice balls with the smiling woman and the singing girl, trying to kick a soccer ball across a tight rope. The emotions tied to every dream are draining. They are a roller coaster, compared to his own, and he struggles with keeping them hidden in the mornings, when he is still gathering his wits. Toushirou has taken to getting up at first light to avoid most everyone else. It works. He emerges from his private quarters, breaking ice off of his hands as he goes, and by the time he has had a cup of coffee and his first meal, his emotions are under control and his subordinates are milling about. It is a good workaround. He is still exhausted. 

She does not return. He waits, and waits, and Rukia is declared truant, and then criminal. Toushirou can’t believe his luck, or the stories about Lieutenant Kuchiki. Something is going on. There is a dark feeling, balled in the pit of his stomach, that warns him against trusting the information he has been given. He starts to keep Matsumoto closer to their own barracks when he is able, keeps a careful eye on Hinamori. 

He doesn’t have a clue who he should be wary of, why he feels this way. He isn’t foolish enough to ignore his instincts. They declare Kuchiki Rukia a criminal and a week later, he sees her in his dreams. She is talking to his soulmate, eyes sad. They speak of Hollows. She tells him about the process of a soul changing into his Hollow and he wants to snap at her to shut up, he knows this, but his soulmate drinks it in with greed. She asks question after question about souls and Toushirou never even finds out how they have come to know one another. 

It starts the beginning of him relishing his dreams, as they become a source of information, scarce though it may be. He does not share this information with anyone other than Rangiku. She has one of the same strange tethers to the situation that he does, as they try to discover the details behind Captain Shiba’s disappearance, and wouldn’t speak of it to anyone for that reason alone. She is also his second, and still closer to him than that, when he allowed himself to admit it. Any scrap of knowledge he collects about Isshin, or the missing lieutenant, is passed off to her the second they are alone in his office, and they spend hours with their heads together, trying to figure everything out. 

Toushirou falls asleep with a lingering headache more nights than he does not, at this point. He dreams, and they are sweet and sad and stressful. He wakes, hoping to fit another piece into the puzzle he’s blindly putting together. 


	3. Orihime I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She wishes for Sora’s hugs, and Sora’s arms, and Sora, but that is impossible. Her dreams only confirm that. There are no more dreams of reciting endless, long-winded laws to a jury of foxes or riding down the street on the back of a whale to get to an important meeting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually enjoyed writing this chapter a lot more than I thought I would. Orihime's situation is one of the most complicated I have planned out, so hopefully it continues to be this easy to write!
> 
> Next soulmate pair POVs you'll be seeing: SadoIshi (up next!), Ganju/Hanatarou, some more IchiRuki, IkkaYumi.

She used to have the loveliest dreams, but all Orihime has now are nightmares. They start the night Sora dies. She is at school when they come to tell her, playing on the playground during an after-school program that kept her from being home alone too much, waiting for Sora to come pick her up like he does every single day. He does not. He will not be picking her up again. They ask about her family and she insists that it is _Sora_ , her brother, _Sora_ , her guardian, _Sora_ , her mother and father and soulmate and friend rolled into one. 

Her closest relative is a great-aunt, an older woman on the fringes of an already frayed family, who lives with her soulmate a few hours south. She agrees to come as soon as she can, but it is not soon enough that Orihime has someone to stay with her, in her apartment ( _not theirs, because there is not a they, there is only her, only Orihime, now_ ). 

The first time she has a nightmare, she is sleeping on a spare futon in Tatsuki’s room. It is a nice room, absolutely smothered in tournament trophies and ribbons, with lots of smiling pictures of the two of them and Tatsuki’s mother. There is a distinct lack of cute plush animals that Orihime would remedy in a second, if allowed, but it is a nice room nonetheless. 

Orihime wakes up in this nice room, with her best friend breathing slow and deep, close enough to reach out and touch. Her eyes simply open. Her mouth is open, too, like she is screaming. Thankfully, she isn’t screaming, because that would wake up Ms. Arisawa and she already has to be up so early, and Orihime really never wants to be a bother, no matter how often she ends up doing exactly that. She closes her mouth. Enraku is the only soft thing in the room and she clutches her pink bear tightly. If she was at home, she would have Otamaru and Chobomari and half a dozen others, but she only has one, since she’s staying at Tatsuki’s, and it’s probably better that she’s here than at home even if it means that she can’t have all of her stuffed animals at once.

There is no one else at home. 

Her eyes hurt, like they have all day, and she’s crying again, which isn’t going to make them feel any better. She tries not to rub at them, despite the itching. The shirt Tatsuki gave her to sleep in is big and soft, so she pats the edges of her sleeves against her cheeks and under eyes, sniffling quietly. Her heart feels like it’s beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. She wants to wake up Tatsuki and ask for a glass of water, or maybe a hug. 

She wishes for Sora’s hugs, and Sora’s arms, and _Sora_ , but that is impossible. Her dreams only confirm that. There are no more dreams of reciting endless, long-winded laws to a jury of foxes or riding down the street on the back of a whale to get to an important meeting. 

From that night on, she dreams of a hole in her chest, and rain. 

It isn’t like the nightmares she remembers from her childhood, but it is terrifying. She feels fear and sorrow and anger every time she closes her eyes. They don’t sound like the nightmares her classmates have. At least she doesn’t wake up screaming. And she could dream about things like being lost in unfamiliar places, or woods filled with giant spiders and prowling werewolves, or having hands so big that she couldn’t pick anything up. There are worse nightmares to suffer. Orihime reminds herself of this, wipes away her tears when she wakes up crying, and never mentions once to her brother what has happened to her dreams. She doesn’t want him to feel guilty, as if his leaving is to blame. 

Her dreams continue like this for the next two and a half years. 

“Orihime,” Tatsuki says, one night when she’s come over to her lonesome apartment for dinner. She’s very good about coming to visit, or asking Orihime to come to her own too-often too-quiet house. With Tatsuki around, she usually doesn’t feel so lonely. 

“Yes, Tatsuki?” 

“What do you dream about?” 

She stiffens, even though she doesn’t mean to, but Tatsuki looks very far away and does not notice. Her eyes are aimed at the cup of tea in her hands. It’s a blend Orihime made herself; all of her friends accept the tea she makes far more readily than the food, so she often has some on hand. The blends even make good gifts. She likes to cater them to each person she’s giving them to, depending on what she thinks they need. That isn’t something she tells them, exactly, but more like something she thinks a lot about on her own time. The tea she likes to give Tatsuki is a nice mix of lavender and mint. As one of the most energetic people Orihime knows, and also the most soothing presence in her life, she thinks the blend fits her pretty well. 

Tatsuki says she likes it, too, and also the chamomile and rose blend she serves today, once she’s added a bit of honey. She drinks two cups before she asks her question, and her compliments and eyes are always sincere. Orihime’s cheeks always flush when someone says something nice about the drinks she makes. It feels like opening the windows on a sunny day. 

With Tatsuki distracted by her own question, Orihime has a slightly easier time lying. No one else her age has lost their soulmate, and her aunt’s partner was still alive, and none of the people in that support group she attends for a while after Sora’s death mention any constant, unchanging nightmares. So, neither does she. 

“Oh, you know,” she says, waving a hand, “usually the same sorts of things I day dream about! Last week, for instance, there was this one about an old lady who got her arm stuck in a post box, so she called for help from a farmer who made his own butter, because she thought that the butter would be enough to get her arm out of the post box. Because the butter is so slippery, right, that her arm should have just slipped right out! Except it didn’t! So, the farmer decides he’s going to get his sister, who is obsessed with those essential oils, and if anything is slicker than butter, it’s oil, right?” 

Tatsuki listens to the entire day dream that she tries to pass off as an actual dream. When she finishes the story, her friend turns her head to look at her with that fond, patient smile Orihime has seen for so many years now, and laughs a tiny, sweet laugh. “You’ve got some imagination, don’t you?” 

* * *

_“Big brothers... you know why they’re born first?”_

She thinks about that speech a lot, more than she realizes, even, until she finds herself staring blankly at the notes she should be taking or the person she should be listening to. In life, Sora had been the ideal big brother. Death changes everything. She learns that love and a strong resolve can reverse any change. She is glad that he is safe, and at peace. 

There is a part of her that is still that little girl, still thirteen and heartbroken that she will never experience the great romance everyone dreams of, the bond treasured more than mere love or marriage, angry at her brother for loving her so much no one else could compete.

(He raises her, and she resents him, only a little. Only when she is alone and no one else can tell. It is mean, and wrong and dark, of her to think like this, but she is young. He loves her, and she loathes him, the smallest bit. He buys her stupid, babyish, blue hairpins and she hates them, vocally. He is her guardian and her family; they are soulmates. Their lives are so intertwined that she is stifled under it. She is teased and laughed at, because the only person who will ever love her is her older brother. 

She would give anything in the world to have the love of her older brother again, so long as he was alive and well.) 

This little girl Orihime, the one who read the books and saw the movies and listen to the songs of soulmates, clings to the hope that she can find love without everything she has had shoved down her throat. She does not have a romantic soulmate. Her soulmate was her brother and he loved her more than anything and he is gone. She remains, and so does her desire to love, and be loved. 

It is human, she assures herself. Everyone loves love! 

She is fifteen when she meets Kurosaki Ichigo, and when they are sixteen, and he hasn’t started dreaming, she allows herself to hope. It is a tiny flutter in her chest, at first, but she watches him closely and notices things that everyone else seems not to, like how smart and kind he is. He frowns a lot, which isn’t nice, but his smiles make up for it. The first time she sees Kurosaki-kun smile, she thinks she gets what all those songs and movies and books meant, a little bit. 

There are terrible rumors about him, his mother and his sanity and his attitude, but there are terrible rumors about Orihime, too. She doesn’t pay any attention to them. She sees him for what he truly is, and she is enamored. He is so sweet. He is so strong. He saves her, again and again, from glaring eyes closing in on her when Tatsuki isn’t around, from falling down the stairs when she is late for class, from dying at her brother’s hands. Kurkosaki-kun is her hero. She never wishes for it in words, because that would feel too much like betrayal and stupidity and selfishness, but in an intangible, hazy way, she wishes that he would dream her dreams, when he starts to see through someone else’s eyes. 

He doesn’t. He starts to dream, and gives very few details to anyone, from what she hears. Tatsuki complains about it a few times. She clamps her lips shut when Orihime points out that she doesn’t talk about her dreams very much, either, and then they go for ice cream instead of going straight home. 

She is not surprised, then, when it turns out that Rukia-chan is his soulmate. She sees how they look at each other. She watches how well they fit together, when no one else is looking and he reaches for Rukia’s hand, or when they’re coordinating in a fight. 

It hurts, like a hole in her chest, and it is wet, like rain, but she is not surprised. 


	4. Chad/Uryuu I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t know if it means anything, that the mud matches the colored pencil he has in mind for the riverbed, that he has never heard a single rumor about Ishida’s soulmate. It is all coincidental, until proven otherwise, he guesses.
> 
> Still, his heart pounds until well after the bell rings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to @polynya for the Conchas idea! Ichigo doesn't bully Uryuu into it, but he still makes them! ❤
> 
> This is my SHIP right now guys. Sorry I'm dragging this AU straight into Rare Pair Hell. I hope you like it!
> 
> (Also, just pretend that Orihime and Chad didn't watch the Grand Menos fight, if you remembered after all! I sure didn't! Lol)

Honestly, he doesn’t know how this group of friends came to be, but they don’t seem to make any sort of sense. There is no noticeable common factor. They hadn’t all gone to the same middle schools, so the comfort of familiarity couldn’t be blamed. Few of them share any extracurriculars or clubs, and their academic standings are all over the charts. Half of them are idiots, and the rest.... well, they could be doing much better without the inferiors they had hanging onto them.

He shoots a glance at Kojima Mizurio, his profile the clearest in Uryuu's line of view. Apart from the strategic effect of the straight man and the comic, Uryuu couldn’t understand why he would pair himself with Asano, of all people. Then again, he deliberates as he pushes up his glasses and reaches for his juice, Kojima appeared to be a lot more interesting than one would think, at first glance.

Initially, Uryuu sees this quietly charismatic boy in his high school class and dismisses him as unimportant. The very first day of classes, however, he and his best friend integrate themselves with two of the (supposedly) most brutish, violent students in the entire school. Despite the stories revolving around Kurosaki and Sado, Kojima Mizurio introduces himself easily and from then on, they’re all friends. He isn’t close enough to hear what is said, the day they meet, but it must have been something extraordinary. Kojima gets them out of trouble, that day and many more in the next two years.

He’s got a way with words, or perhaps people – _or_ , when Uryuu continues to think on it, _perhaps both_. Uryuu considers himself eloquent, so long as he isn’t overly emotional, but he cannot twist what he’s saying or spin a story quite like Kojima. The administration, the teachers, and parents alike believe every word that comes out of his mouth. Students are more aware of his penchant for dishonesty, yet many of them still associate freely with him. It was interesting, to say the least.

People associate less freely with Asano, which is probably because everyone thinks of him as Kojima’s idiot friend and not much else. He dips in and out of extracurriculars, sticks with a club or sport for a semester before getting bored, and never makes it too far up the class rankings list. Unlike Kojima, Uryuu didn’t think Asano did it on purpose.

The pair of them alone are strange enough, but with the addition of Kurosaki and Sado, even Uryuu is stumped. He knows the rumors surrounding their violent tendencies are not unfounded. At the same time, he knows they are more than exaggerated. The two of them seem to get into plenty of trouble, though it almost always comes swaggering up to them with crooked smiles and sharp words. He watches it happen several times a week, for years. When they aren’t getting into some sort of fight, they do not seem any easier to understand.

Kurosaki spends his time inside his family home/clinic or helping out spirits, even if he was largely clueless about how to do that until the little Shinigami showed up. He actually helps them now, allowing the lost souls to move on, instead of attempting to resolve their unfinished business. Inoue claims that he attends every single one of his younger sister’s soccer games. It is true that Uryuu has seen him out and about with his sisters, the fierceness of his expression dimmed and the arrogance in his body language toned down. That version of Kurosaki seems nothing like the one who barks and glares at Keigo as he tries, unsuccessfully, to get Ichigo to agree to a trip to a nude beach over summer break.

As for Sado, Uryuu stands by his earlier analysis of this group. He could do much better without Kurosaki and Asano around.

* * *

He is sitting at his desk, half an hour until class starts, large hand wrapped carefully around a pencil. He pauses, closes his eyes and focuses on the image in his mind. His hand starts to move again, drawing the sweeping line of the waterfall, the shape of the pool at the bottom before it flows into a wide stream. The flowers are unfamiliar to him and he can’t remember enough to identify them using a book from the library. That is disappointing, but he doesn’t linger. The image has been getting fuzzier since he rolled out of bed. If he hadn’t left the sketchbook inside his desk, it would already be finished, on paper, a mirror image of the scene from his dream.

Other students make their way into the classroom, dropping into chairs and sitting on desks, morning hush blanketing them all. No one approaches him. He can hear Inoue down the hall and his hand moves a little faster. His classmates already in the room have little interest in him, but she is always polite enough to chatter away to him about her morning before they take their seats.

He needs to finish this, first.

Last night was not the first time he had seen this place. It frequently showed up in his dreams when he was younger, along with an old man who had kind eyes and a nice voice. Chad hadn’t seen the man in years, or this place, and his drawing skills are much better, now. He’s had plenty of time to practice.

He gets the picture as clear and detailed as he can in the few minutes he has left. It isn’t perfect, but he feels good about the rock formations and the waterfall, at least. Too bad his stubby pack of colored pencils are on his desk at home. The trees could use some color. The flowers, too, even though he wasn’t sure that would help him identify them.

Ichigo walks in as he’s folding the sketch pad up and tucking it into his backpack. Best not to forget it again. He might oversleep next time, or lose the details of his dream before he got to school.

“You’re here early.”

“Got up early,” he says.

Stretching his legs out underneath the seat in front of him, Ichigo snorts. “What’s that like?”

He grins a little, doesn’t answer. Inoue is currently fighting off her biggest fan, and he waits for the sound of her protector stomping down the hall. Seconds later, he hears it, and Tatsuki barrels into the classroom already fuming. The resulting scuffle distracts him enough that he almost misses Ishida slipping through the door. Chad glances at the clock and is surprised to see him arriving so late. There’s less than ten minutes before class starts.

He studies Ishida carefully. They’ve never really spoken, despite being in class together for a couple of years now. Chad doesn’t know a lot about him, really, besides that he keeps to himself. He stays at the top of the class, runs the sewing club, and speaks with Orihime on the rare occasions she approaches him. He usually isn’t late, but pretty early. He also usually isn’t a little sweaty and out of breath. Chad wonders if he missed a bus and had to run to school. It doesn’t look as though he woke up late. His hair is as neat as ever, uniform crisp and spotless, sneakers-

Ishida’s sneakers are covered in mud, actually, which is weird. It’s the dry season, for one thing, and he really doesn’t seem the type to carelessly step in a puddle, for another. The mud still sticks to the edges of his shoes wetly, fresh; Chad watches him scowl at the ground when Ishida sees a glob fall to the floor underneath his desk as he arranges himself more comfortably.

He slides his eyes away right as Ishida looks up. He doesn’t know if he’s been caught. He doesn’t know if it means anything, that the mud matches the colored pencil he has in mind for the riverbed, that he has never heard a single rumor about Ishida’s soulmate. It is all coincidental, until proven otherwise, he guesses.

Still, his heart pounds until well after the bell rings.

* * *

He barely makes it back to his apartment, ignores the looks on the bus when he slouches against his seat in a dirty uniform, his hand shaking as he unlocks his door. It feels too good to collapse against it, though it is the only good thing he feels at the moment. His arrogance is astounding even to himself, with hindsight. What had he been thinking?

It goes against everything he has been taught, to endanger so many people for the sake of his pride. If it weren’t for Kurosaki-

Uryuu shuts that train of thought down resolutely and makes his way to the bathroom. He strips the uniform off, hangs it up on the door to wash later, and removes his glasses. Arms folded, he lays them on the counter and turns to the shower. Numbly, he adjusts the temperature until it is nearly scalding. He feels every ache and scrape when he steps under the spray, all the injuries he had sustained earlier that day, sharp and clear. It is not enough.

He stays until the water runs cold, and his skin is still too-red when he steps out. He brushes his teeth for too long, gets lost staring at the faucet and berating himself, spits too-red into the sink, and washes it down the drain. His glasses bring clarity of sight. His futon brings warmth. He takes the glasses back off and rolls over on his side.

“Look at this one, Yasutora!”

His head swings around and he catches sight of Abuelo, holding up an over-sized mackerel still attached to the end of his rod. They are on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Well, not the middle, as there is a shimmer of something solid enough that it could be land, far, far out. His back is pressed against the warm wood of the deck, Abuelo sitting in one of the fishing seats, grinning proudly. He brings his hands up above his head, claps his approval, and lays back down when Abuelo starts to wrestle the fish into the cooler.

The sky is a familiar blue, one that Uryuu tries to place and fails, when he’s barely conscious of the dream, but knows very well when he is awake. Clouds in strange shapes dot the sky. He watches a spiky dinosaur float by, then an arrow, tip pointed off to the side, and then a fish. Abuelo catches another and he applauds again. The clouds keep coming – a guitar, a pair of dogs, a waterfall, another dinosaur, a sailboat, a lion.

“Do you think that’s enough for today?”

“Should be, Abuelo.”

“Are you ready to head back to shore, then?”

He makes an agreeing noise and rolls to his feet, limbs long and sun warm. They pull in the net together and Uryu feels the strain in his arms, the heat on his bare back, the cool spray of the ocean when they yank it out of the water. The cooler is packed with the exact same mackerel over and over, a dozen of them buried under the ice. He slaps it shut and opens the one next to it, passes his abuelo a bottle of water and holds one in his hand without drinking it, though the smell of salt makes him thirsty.

Abuelo takes the wheel after they’ve slipped on their life jackets. He sprawls out, on his side with an elbow propping his head up, and listens to the music as it comes back on the wind. It is peaceful. It is so comfortable he doesn’t think there’s anywhere else he’d rather be. The sea, the sun, the boat – everything is perfect.

“Is it still there?”

He looks down, free hand coming up to trace the strange mark on his chest. It is the same bright, electric blue as the sky, and stands out starkly against his dark skin. Abuelo had thought he’d drawn on himself, or bought one of those tattoos that flecked off after a day. The mark brings him a deep confusion, a sense of being unfulfilled - and something like longing sticks in his throat. He splays his hand over it, fingers unable to mirror the five points and instead settling between them.

Uryuu wants to snatch his hand away and tell Abuelo it’s none of his business. He answers with an affirmation, instead. It is the answer his abuelo expected and they both let the conversation slip away on the wind. It is a long time until they reach the shore and he stews in the mixture of emotions evoked by the blue star on his chest. They are not unlike the emotions Uryuu feels for the paired one on his waking body, when he brings a hand to cover the width of his bicep, fingers sprawled between crimson lines.

They reach the shore and he steps not onto sand, but grass, lush and green. He hears the splash of a waterfall, tries to swivel his head around to find the source of a sound he knows too well. Abuelo is talking to him again, though, and his attention doesn’t waver.

“I think it is a good sign. You have such a strong connection, there is a physical manifestation. Amazing.”

He places his hand across the mark again, cheeks heating up, and looks away from Abuelo. The confusion pounds behind his temples. He has no answers, only feelings and dreams.

The cooler is heavy in his free hand, fishing rods clacking together over Abuelo’s shoulder, though the boat is gone, when he turns his head far enough to see where it should be bobbing on the water. The ocean is gone. He looks forward, sees a hazy image of a waterfall and stream.

Uryuu startles awake, fists clenching in the blanket as he bolts upright. His chest heaves with the breaths he tries to drag in. It doesn’t feel like they reach his lungs, but he keeps trying, too desperately. He unlocks his right hand from the blanket and reaches up to cover the bare skin of left arm, hiding the red, four-pointed cross on his shoulder. His breath comes back to him slowly and he curses himself the entire time.

When his chest is no longer on fire, he falls back against the futon and exhales heavily. He has been so careful, for so many years, and of course it would all have to come to an end sometime, but now all of his well-laid plans would go to waste. Only a year away from completion, and he would have to start from scratch. His dream is proof enough. The conversation he had overheard between Sado and that fucking menace, Kurosaki, only fuel to the fire.

“Fuck,” he says, to the empty space between his mouth and the ceiling. “Fucking Kurosaki. One _fucking_ year.”

Uryuu oscillates between hating himself and Kurosaki until the sun is up. It is Kurosaki’s imbecilic waving of his firestorm reiastu that started this, and his sudden transformation into an apparent Substitute Shinigami that ramped it up. It is his own fault that so many Hollows appeared, though, and his fault that the amount that came through proved enough of a threat to awaken even more powers in his peers. He started the year as the only abnormality, besides a few of his classmates being sensitive to spirits. He would finish it as one of four, at least – five if the Shinigami with Kurosaki stuck around, more if they weren’t careful from now on.

It is his own fault that Sado Yasutora’s powers have awoken, though he could never have guessed that strong, dormant spiritual pressure would explode into this – something dark and monstrous, something strong and amazing, if Kurosaki is to be believed. The conversation was a short one, but Uryuu picked up everything he could from it. He knows that Sado has some sort of power none of them understand.

He knows Sado is actively looking for him, too, or else he would never have dreamed of the things he saw when awake.

The plan is as simple as he can make it. He will act today. It is Saturday. He stands, sleepless, and puts away his blankets and futon. His hands go through the motions automatically, his mind occupied with forming a shopping list. The baking basics are tucked away in a cabinet, and he has maybe half the ingredients he needs for the soup, so that leaves the spices, chocolate, and fresh meat to pick up. If he makes it to the store before nine, he will be finished before lunch. Uryuu picks out something to wear for his short trip, presentable but nothing nice, nothing he’ll be upset to dirty in the kitchen when he returns.

* * *

He opens the door and blinks in surprise. Ishida Uryuu is standing outside the door to his apartment, an expectant, pinched expression on his face and two large containers in his hands. One is a large bowl and he can smell something savory from within, making his mouth water. It is nearly lunch time. He had been thinking about going out to the ramen stand around the corner, or maybe scraping together something edible from the small selection in his kitchen, but it seems like things are going in another direction. He can’t say he expected it.

The memory of mud on Ishida’s shoes last week comes to him, along with the way he carefully slipped past Chad on the way out the classroom that day, as his big body took up most of the doorway, Ishida’s blue eyes cast down and the tips of his ears pink. “Hello,” he says.

Ishida bows his head, the light catching his glasses and hiding his eyes as he does. “Good morning, Sado. I was wondering if you would like to have lunch with me.” The words sound as pinched as his expression. They also sound rehearsed. 

He thinks of the way Ichigo had to bribe Ishida into sitting with them and the resulting bickering throughout their meal. That was only yesterday. This seems very different. There is something settling low in his gut, though, almost like satisfaction, so he steps aside and waves a hand in invitation. He doesn’t know what to say, and so, doesn’t speak.

Once inside, Ishida looks to him for direction. Chad takes the containers, which both seem to be full of food, and watches his unexpected guest slip his shoes off before leading Ishida to the kitchen. His small table is clean, thankfully, though he tries not to eye the dishes in the sink too guiltily. It’s not like he expected someone to come over, today. Ishida watches as he sits the food down, staring sharply but without the haughty judgement usually there. Chad walks over to the cupboards, unsure of what Ishida brought. The larger container sloshed when he was carrying it, so he grabs a pair of bowls and spoons, hums to himself for a moment about the contents of the other container, takes down two plates as well, and sets the table awkwardly for the pair of them.

They sit down. The silence stretches. He shifts, looks toward the food uncertainly.

“I’m sorry, for dropping by unannounced.”

The apology makes him glance up a little too quickly, more surprised by that than Ishida’s initial appearance. “It’s fine,” he says in answer.

Between them, the obvious question of _Is it, really?_ hangs over the table. Neither of them ask. Ishida pushes up his glasses and squares his shoulders, though Chad thinks only one of those actions are voluntary. He takes the bigger bowl, soup, like Chad had thought, and rises on his own to get a ladle when he realizes that Chad has forgotten one. Ishida doesn’t ask permission, doesn’t ask where he should look, just walks up to the counter and opens the right drawer, takes out the only ladle Chad owns, and returns to table. The ladle shakes in his hand when he dips it down into the soup. It is steady when he begins to fill the bowls. He doesn’t spill a single drop, or say a single word.

He kind of wonders if he’s dreaming, or hallucinating, because this is a very strange turn of events for his day. There’s a strange feeling in his gut and he wants to reach for his chest, cover up the mark already hidden by his shirt. He’s never gone out of his way to hide it. He lets everyone assume it’s a tattoo, like his _Amore e Morte_. It isn’t like he could answer their questions, after all.

The soup smells delicious. His stomach reminds him that he had been hunting for food when Ishida showed up. He slides a bowl across the table to Chad, both hands wrapped around it and head tilted down.

Something tells him this is a test, and as always, he hesitates. Ishida’s nearly white-knuckling the bowl; his shoulders are tense, brows furrowed. Chad feels like he did as a child, diving off the dock first thing in the morning, body escaping the pressing heat of the sun by submerging himself in a shock of cool salt water. The hairs on his arm stand up. He exhales slowly and deliberately. Chad reaches for the bowl, two large hands moving to settle around it the same way Ishida’s holding it, and their fingers graze as he slips his hands away so that Chad’s may take their place. There is a spark, there, flint and steel scraping together, and he almost reaches past the bowl and takes Ishida’s hands instead. His hands wrap around the bowl. He feels disappointed and cannot say why.

Ishida picks up his spoon but does not eat. He is expecting Chad to go first, and while he knows Ishida is a stickler for the rules, he hadn’t seemed quite this formal before. Things are already very unusual today, so he dips his spoon into the bowl. It is mackerel miso soup. The smell overwhelms him, when he raises the spoon to his mouth, and he quickly dunks the spoon back into the bowl so that he doesn’t drop it.

He does not have to taste the soup to know who created this specific recipe, knows it is heavy on the wakami, knows the mackerel was grilled with lemon and garlic. He has dreamed so many times of Sensei, allowing him to toss the spring onions in from a safe distance, as the pot hung over the hearth. Lost, Chad takes the spoon in hand once again. He brings it to his mouth and takes a bite.

He swallows carefully. The taste is the same. He’s tried to make it before, ordered this particular soup at a few different places when his recipe didn’t turn out. He tries it when Keigo wants to go somewhere new for lunch or Kaito drags him out for dinner after practice. None of them were just right, none exactly the same as the phantom taste in his mouth the same day every spring, lingering for hours after he has woken up. He’s known the taste of this soup for eight years, now.

Ishida has the other container in his hands when Chad looks up. He watches as the lid is removed and Ishida reaches in, pulls out something wrapped in a napkin, fist-sized and sweet-smelling, and his appetite is gone. His hand clenches around the spoon, metal digging into his palm; he puts it down, too hard, on the table. He takes the second offering with a shaking hand, peels back the napkin.

Chad takes a bite of the concha and is not sure he can swallow. His throat is so tight. His eyes and nose burn. His chest has collapsed, a black hole in between his ribs doing the devouring for him. He swallows, with difficulty. Ishida is looking at him, finally, face hard as stone and eyes too intent to match up. He doesn’t understand.

He does, but-

His stomach growls loudly, and Chad takes another bite of the concha. Dark chocolate flakes fall to the table and he does not care. The cinnamon is the same as the sun, to him, and he closes his eyes to taste it and feel at home, as if he is outside tipping his face up towards the sky, as if he is in the kitchen listening to two deep voices harmonize with a staticky radio. He eats the concha in quick, sharp bites. The napkin crumples in his hand as he eats. Tears fill his eyes and he fights to keep them from falling, tries to focus on the food instead.

Ishida sets his spoon down when Chad looks at him again. His bowl is half full. Chad's is nearly untouched. He wipes the concha crumbs from his face and cannot find it within him to be embarrassed, as he waits for the other boy to speak. This was rehearsed. Like his greeting, he imagines that Ishida had planned this visit, maybe practiced making the conchas, even. He’s known about this for a while, Chad realizes.

“How long?” he asks, roughly. He has a pretty good idea, of course, but he hopes that he’s wrong.

“The first day of high school.”

He is right, and that doesn’t surprise him. It hurts. Chad sticks out like sore thumb, stands out above the crowd, and Ishida Uryuu is no idiot. The recognition must have been pretty easy.

“Why now, then?”

There is a complicated tangle of emotions building up in his chest and he cannot process any of them. That satisfaction in his gut is gone. He puts the napkin on the table, thinks about clenching his hands around the edges, decides he does not want to go buy a new table this week. His hands ball up on his thighs. He can’t look at Ishida.

He hears Ishida take another bite of his soup, quickly, and release a long breath through his nose. Chad thinks of how easy it would be to turn the table over. That is not the course of action he is going to take, but it feels good to imagine, for a second.

“I wasn’t going to tell you.”

It is good he didn’t grab the table, after all. He is surprised that it doesn’t overturn, with how fast he stands. He sways on his feet. His stomach clenches, nauseous and too empty. “I think you should go.”

Ishida Uryu does not move, not even when Chad takes a – _threatening? could he actually do that?_ – step towards him. He adjusts his glasses again, trains his cobalt gaze on Chad’s face, looks at him sternly and directly. Chad is over a head taller, over twice as broad, _overwhelmed_ as he stares into his soulmate’s face for the first time, after almost a decade of seeing through his eyes. He fails to intimidate Ishida.

“I would like the chance to explain myself, considering I spent a considerable amount of effort formulating this plan when my last one...” He trails off for a moment, contemplating his choice of words until he decides on, “fell through.”

“I don’t care.”

They both know it is a lie. His hands are still balled up at his sides, so he makes an effort to unclench them and stretch his fingers. Ishida does not look away from his face. Chad stares back, attempting to seem resolute and failing.

He takes a step back when Ishida stands up, and the irony of the situation makes him dizzy. He isn’t the slightest bit scared of Chad, doesn’t flinch when he approaches or track the way his hands move when he’s upset. It is Chad who is uncertain, afraid, in this situation, with this person. His soulmate. He takes another step backwards. The black hole in his chest continues to grow. He wonders if it’s taken away the mark there, yet.

After he stands, Ishida does not move towards Chad. He dusts off the perfectly clean thighs of his slacks. He pushes his glasses up again. He looks at the ground, and Chad, and the ground, and then settles on Chad with a steely resolve in his face. “I started dreaming about you when I was eight. It was the middle of summer, and my Sensei had told me that if I learned to focus my reiatsu well enough, I could sense the soulbonds between people. It would take years for me to perfect, but the easiest soulbond to find, especially for beginner’s, is your own.”

Ishida starts to undo the buttons on his shirt sleeves as he speaks, and when he opens up the left one, something silver and glinting falls out. He clasps it in his palm before Chad can see what it is. There is a flare of power, a scent sharp and cold breaking through the aroma of the food abandoned on the table, and a blue light that Chad has dreamed of many, many times before. Ishida reaches out with his free hand.

His fingers stretch towards a spot in the air reverently, pausing right before he closes them around what looks like nothing, but feels like something. The storm of emotions, the black hole, everything disappears but this, and he isn’t sure what it is. It materializes before his eyes, shimmering to life, tethered to his chest. Ishida has his hand around a ribbon. It flows in the air like an eel in the water, like his hair when he dives underneath the ocean spray and reaches for the sand below. It is white, like snow, with red edges, like a knife, but there is blue, too. The same electric blue in Ishida’s other hand is threaded through the ribbon. It shimmers as the ribbon writhes around, catching the light and making him look at it.

“This is,” he pauses, slides his fingers down a stretch of the ribbon, the red stark against the paleness of his skin, “yours, ours. The red and the blue are reversed in mine. The blue comes from my Quincy heritage.”

“Quincy?” The word is unfamiliar on his tongue, despite the three languages he speaks. As an afterthought, he adds, “And the red?”

Ishida releases the ribbon. It slips through his fingers like water, like he’s reaching too closely to the edge of the cliff, trying to touch the waterfall, and it feels as though they both wait for Sensei’s scolding. It does not come. Chad takes a step forward. He wonders how many answers he will get today. A smaller part of him wonders if these answers mean anything, considering the years of lying. Or hiding the truth. He does not know which sounds worse to his own ears and regrets stepping closer.

“I don’t know. Your powers are what prompted me to come here, today. I overheard you and Kurosaki discussing them, and I realized that you already had most of the knowledge I had decided to never inflict on my soulmate.” Ishida drops his other hand and Chad stares at the cross that hangs around his wrist. He thinks of church bells and eulogies and prayer beads. He thinks of faith and conviction. “You know all about Hollows, having fought one even, and the lost spirits roaming around every day. You know of Shinigami,” and Chad didn’t understand the way he spit the word, “and so, it isn’t far fetched for you to know about Quincies.”

Ishida thought his soulmate wouldn’t believe him, or maybe he didn’t want to endanger him, it sounds like. Chad thinks that sort of makes sense, when he is looking around the crater of the last three years, smoldering and smashed with the revelations of today. It is not easy to look around.

“My first dream was of the ocean. I had never been, at the time, but it was so...vivid, so real. I still remember how stepping onto the hot sand burned my feet and only made me run faster, how I dove fingers first when I was far out enough, pushing off the sand as it slipped under my feet. The salt in my eyes. The sun on my shoulders. I’ve still never been to a beach that nice. I remember everything, Sado.”

He can remember it a thousand different times, can’t know which one Ishida is referring to, but the sentiment is strong. Those are his memories. That was him, diving and swimming and running. He knows this.

“I dreamed about you every night for a year, two months, and five days.”

A question works its way into his throat and he unlocks his jaw to let it out, strangled and raw, “And then?”

“My sensei was murdered. He had been training me in the ways of the Quincy, teaching me our history and our traditions. I wanted to follow in his steps so badly. He was murdered, and I made the decision to walk the path of a Quincy, at the age of nine. The next day, I received my mark.”

It feels like the room is tilting, or maybe he’s sinking, and then there are two pale hands wrapping around his arms to keep him steady. Chad thinks for a moment on the benefits of staying upright in order to keep the last shred of his pride, thinks, eloquently, _Fuck this_ , and wraps his much larger hands around Ishida’s much smaller arms. He pulls them both to the floor despite the indignant squawk Ishida lets out. Legs crossed, hands in his lap, face serious, he faces Ishida.

When he’s finished arranging himself comfortably, with the air of a disgruntled cat, Ishida waits for Chad to speak.

“I want to know everything.”

There, in the floor of his apartment, with a perfectly good lunch getting cold on the table, he sits across from his soulmate and demands answers. His patience is years dry, nothing but brittle remains left in him. Something like hope is starting to grow in his chest, though, with the black hole gone, and Ishida’s eyes are hidden for a split second by a glare of light, but when they are revealed, he is staring at Chad with surprise. His cheeks flush, pink blooming across his bone white face.

His relationship with God is the same as it was when he was a young boy, in the very back pew smushed between two loving, kind men, as people cast them dark looks over their shoulders, away from the priest and the image of Maria looming over them in stained glass. His relationship with fate is the same as it was when his abuelo passed away three short months after his tito suffers a bout of pneumonia too strong for his weak lungs. Something, though, makes him listen to everything Ishida has to say.

Maybe it is Abuelo’s patience; maybe it is Tito’s thirst for knowledge. Maybe it is Chad’s own desire to know what Ishida has to say, to see his mark, to show Ishida his own. His fingers clench in the fabric of his sweatpants.

When Ishida pulls his arm from his sleeve, a length of pale skin and corded muscles, and reveals the cross on his bicep, his fingers itch. He wants to grab his sketch pad, trace his fingers across the crimson and black mark, grab Ishida by the collar and shake him.

Chad unbuttons his shirt completely, lets it fall open and speak for itself. He thinks to look down at it, but he knows exactly what it looks like, the blue and the white, the five points, the circle connecting them all. He looks at Ishida, instead.

The regret in his face is so strong that Chad is glad they are sitting down, or one of them surely would have ended up on the floor regardless. It is the most disarming thing about today, so far, and that’s...definitely saying something. He tries to swallow, but there is something caught in his throat. Ishida’s hand moves forward and jerks back. His eyes are wide and wet and wondrous. With difficulty, he raises them to meet Chad’s own confused, chestnut eyes.

He swallows the bullet and wraps his fingers around Ishida’s wrist, pulling him forward and pressing his hand against Chad’s chest. Those long, pale fingers splay across his skin. He can’t breathe, but that makes a lot of sense, because he’s pretty sure he’s going to drown in the way Ishida is looking at him. Air rushes out of his lungs when he puts his hand over the cross on Ishida’s arm.

There isn’t a crater between them right now. It lays behind them, in the past, where much of his path is smoldering and smashed, not just the last few years. There is nothing between them right now – not miles or oceans or time zones. Chad wonders what lays ahead, heart pounding under Uryuu’s hand.


	5. Ganju/Hanatarou I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hanatarou! Don’t go dropping that water, now, with your scrawny arms.” 
> 
> He huffs a sarcastic laugh, his lips quirking up and hands tightening around base of the gourd. He won’t drop it, he knows, can feel the quiet strength in his soulmate’s admittedly scrawny arms. The overwhelming happiness in his chest is different, though, and conflicts harshly with the anger that Ganju feels, looking at this man. His soulmate is so excited, to see this Shinigami scum waiting for him in a Runkongai street. He doesn’t understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pre-canon, mostly because I wanted to explore the idea of someone in the SS having a living soulmate and watching them arrive in the SS, but the idea only ended up playing a small part of this chapter. I've jacked Seinosuke from the novels for my plot, and honestly messed up his timeline. Oh well. Ganju and Hanatarou are canonically in love (changemymind.jpg) and their Romeo/Juliet situation is to die for.
> 
> On that note, this is like. A lot sadder than I intended.

Ganju bolts straight off of his futon, legs tangling up in his blankets and forcing him face-first into the floor. He recovers as quickly as possible and leaps to his feet. There is a smile on his face for the first time in months as he swipes the blood from his nose, and it feels so _good_ , almost as good as getting his first dream. His feet slide against the wood as he slams his door shut behind him. It bounces back open but he is already gone. 

The rhythmic slapping of his feet against the floor wakes Kuukaku long before he flings open the door to her room and launches himself into her bed. She has already rolled out of the way to give him a fair amount of space to flop down on. He starts talking a mile a minute, telling her all about the chores he had dreamed of doing. 

His hands are far too clumsy to ever mend clothes as well as his soulmate could, their fingers pale and thin with blunt fingernails compared to his short, wide palms and thick fingers. Kuukaku tosses her blanket back over her head and groans halfway through his first sentence. She peeks her head out and asks a few questions though, about what he saw and the song he heard his soulmate humming. Unfortunately, she can’t place the tune. His sister lets him chatter on and on for nearly an hour before she kicks him out, refusing to hear any more soulmate talk until after both breakfast and his chores are finished. 

Bonnie senses his excitement as soon as he’s in the yard, and her squeals match the noises his heart has been making since he woke up. He feeds the hogs and tells them all about his soulmate while he does so, repeating as many details as he can remember, hoping that saying them aloud will help. It is how he remembers things about Kaien. Those memories and facts can’t be repeated to Kuukaku, or some stranger, so he tells the hogs. They listen better than most people he knows, anyhow. 

“I didn’t get a good look at ‘em, or anything, probably ‘cause there’s no need ta be lookin’ in mirrors when you’re mendin’ clothes... But they have a sweet voice, and steady hands.” He sighs dreamily. The last of the feed is spread out for the hogs and they are chowing down fast. Bonnie chief among them. He leans against the fence, watching the animals eat, thoughts far away in last night’s dreams. 

“They sound so soft spoken. I hope they’re sweet. I could use someone who doesn’t boss me around as much as Kuukaku! Someone who laughs at my jokes! And listens to my stories – besides you, of course, girl.” 

He pats Bonnie on the head, nudges Bunny over so he can dump the water buckets in their trough. Bon flops over on the ground, too close to the open toes of his sandals, snorting. Ganju laughs and rubs her ever expanding belly. The rest of the girls huddle close and hope for attention, too. His hands move from back to belly to back, boar to boar to boar, and he keeps talking over their little grunts and snorts. 

“I still remember when Kaien met Miyako, how he smiled for a nearly a week straight after the very first time he saw her. And they knew right from the start! There was no doubt in his mind, from the moment he saw her, that she was the one he had dreamed about, and he was right! Can ya picture it, Bonbon?” Ganju grins, tips his head towards the sky. “What a thing to look forward to.” 

He finishes feeding the girls and moves to to the other animals, whistling. The job is more muscle memory than work, at this point. He enjoys it more than most of the odd work his sister has him do. Collecting the water and feed buckets, he runs off to finish the rest of his chores. If he’s done early enough, Kuukaku might not notice him sneaking a nap in after lunch. 

* * *

“Don’t forget to bring home water, Hanatarou!” 

“Yes, Mother, I will remember.” 

He bows his head, scurrying past her as she rocks a crying little Hasu back and forth. The tired smile she tosses over her shoulder makes him smile in return. He knows she has been stressed lately, and does not wish to add to that, so he has not yet mentioned the dreams. With the baby, and the loss of the rest of their family, it doesn’t feel right. There is a heaviness that settles over his shoulders when he realizes that he is now older than Seinosuke ever got to be. He also does not wish to remind Mother of her own empty dreams, so soon after they began to be that way. 

Hanatarou hums quietly to himself as he passes through the village. Their home is on the edge of the woods, which makes for good shade and soil, but not many neighbors. He doesn’t mind. It is better to shoulder the sadness without anyone to see, so that he may have the time to tuck it away before he reaches the bustling center of the village. It only takes a moment. The river is not far and the washing not heavy, so he stops by the fisherman’s stall to speak with Aiko. Her shy smile is one of the few kindnesses he could count on seeing every day. 

It is lucky he takes this small detour. She trades him a week's worth of sea bream for a day’s worth of mending. He promises to come by that afternoon to pick up the clothing that needs repaired, walks to the riverbed singing. 

It is a relief that carries him to the water on light feet. They will have to share a portion for one among the three of them, but Hanatarou is glad they will not go hungry this week. He will bring home two bream a day, for the next week, without the inevitable indignity of trying to catch it himself. It will be a big help to them. Their garden struggles to produce much until the end of spring. Father had been a far better hunter; Seinosuke much better at finding berries and mushrooms in the early months of the year. 

Aiko's father is the best fisherman in their village, seems to know the water better than his own two hands. His daughter has the same sea legs. She knows the tides and the current and where the fish liked to stay. Until a great storm takes their best fishing boat and Aiko's left arm, they spend their days together on the water. She goes out to sea rarely nowadays, but Hanatarou always knows when she has gone, because her smile will be brighter than the sun for days afterwards. Her dreams are also of the sea, more often than not, and have been for the last five years. She says she is glad that her soulmate shares the same love of the water. He often walks away from a visit with Aiko in awe that she could be so fearless, in the face of something so terrifying. Is that what a soulmate inspired? Hanatarou doubts he could find courage like that, no matter the inspiration. 

The house is quiet when he returns. His mother is glad for the news, her shoulders losing a bit of their rigidity as she passes baby Hasu to him and thanks Hanatarou for being so resourceful. He blushes and stutters. It is an opportunity that fell into his hands, more than anything. She does not allow him to brush off her thanks, giving him a warm smile and readying her things to go. That is two smiles in one day, as she turns to tell him to get the fire ready before she is to return, and maybe, things are beginning to look up. He rocks his sister back and forth, sings a softer song to her than what he sang at the river, and allows himself a few moments to miss his father. Only a few months had passed since his death, and it often feels like Mother is trying to walk around the absence, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of their home that he could neither speak of nor find a way around. He knows it must be even harder on her. He knows Hasu will not know their father. Hanatarou has fifteen years of memories, and a soulmate sharing his dreams. 

He has his memories of Seinosuke as well, which Hasu will not. Sarcastic, strong-willed, and smart – his brother had been a force of nature in a sickly body. Hanatarou thinks of him often, despite the three years since his passing. 

It comforts him to think that somewhere out there, someone thinks of _him_. He knows it is a selfish comfort. Soon enough, he will have to tell Mother, confess that he has a chance to find his soulmate so soon after she has lost her own, and he fears her reaction. With her sadness only just abating, he doesn’t wish to make it worse. 

Hasu sleeps; he tucks her into the little basket he wove when Mother announced she was pregnant, though she is nearly too big for it now. He sits with Aiko's mending, listens to Hasu's even breathing, and thinks. By the time he stokes the fire, expecting Mother at any time, Hanatarou has made a decision. He will do his best to make Mother happy, make an extra effort to help with her many responsibilities, before telling her. It isn’t a fair trade, not like the fish and the mending, but it is the best he can do. 

* * *

“Oh, come on, quit your blubbering.” 

“B-but it’s been days, and I don’t know what’s wrong!” 

She pats him awkwardly on the back, too hard, making him choke on his sobs and lurch forward. “Well, who said something’s wrong?” 

“Of course, something is w-wrong, sis! I haven’t seen a thing.” 

“You gotta calm down. Until you dream about something else, you can’t say what happened. Could just be a bad connection. You know how strong a living person’s reiatsu has to be in order for you to be dreaming about him at all.” Kuukaku ruffles his hair and then forces his head back to meet her eyes. It hurts, but she smiles at him and means it, the corners of her eyes crinkling up, left side of her mouth higher than the right. “So, don’t worry so much. And you had better fix that damn fence your beauty Bonnie broke.” 

Ganju makes an effort to stifle his sobs, the tears slowing down and his breathing no longer stuttering. It works, even if it takes long enough that Kuukaku sighs and pats his head too roughly again. “Right away, sis. I got the paint ‘nd all.” 

“You better!” 

Bon sits next to him while he repairs the fence. It takes an hour or so, and then he has to wait for the first coat of paint to dry. He shares his lunch with Bonnie underneath a tree. She tries to catch the plums he tosses her, manages one and snuffles the rest from the ground cheerily, and lays down at his side when she’s had her fill. Her hair is rough and familiar, a comforting bristle against his legs. Shaking his water gourd dry, he sighs and swallows the few drops left. He’ll fill it up again when he’s done with the next layer of paint. Which will be after he makes sure it’s dry... 

He sits the gourd down, head falling back against the tree trunk and eyes falling closed. Fear twists in his gut at the thought of falling asleep, but naps on a stressful, sunny afternoon feel so nice. Ganju shifts; Bonnie snorts. He pats her shoulder, leaves his hand there, breathing slowing down. 

“-cuse me? Sir?” 

“What? What is it you want?” 

“I was wondering if I could get a loaf of bread, and perhaps some water.” 

The shop keep eyes him with a little less hostility, but a little more suspicion. His mustache twitches up higher. “Got something to pay for it with?” 

Ganju pats down his pocket, pulls out a handful of familiar coins, and drops a few into a waiting hand. He is given the food in return. The bread is dark and fragrant, richer than what he and Kuukaku eat with their meals, made with herbs and butter. He smiles at the man, turns around feeling satisfied with the bread in his bag and a large gourd of water in his arms. The shop is a little run down, he notices, and made of lighter wood than a lot of the places in his soulmate’s little village. 

He brushes past the curtain over the door, and steps out into a dusty street with his purchase. Ganju is confused, because this isn’t his soulmate’s village at all, and he’s never traveled anywhere else in the last couple of years that Ganju has been dreaming. In fact, this looks kind of like- 

“Hanatarou! Don’t go dropping that water, now, with your scrawny arms.” 

He huffs a sarcastic laugh, his lips quirking up and hands tightening around base of the gourd. He won’t drop it, he knows, can feel the quiet strength in his soulmate’s admittedly scrawny arms. The overwhelming happiness in his chest is different, though, and conflicts harshly with the anger that Ganju feels, looking at this man. His soulmate is so excited, to see this Shinigami _scum_ waiting for him in a Runkongai street. He doesn’t understand. 

Ganju can feel himself gaining consciousness, his confusion and anger and hurt coming to the surface. He is relieved and upset. 

“Of course, not, brother,” he laughs. “My young, scrawny arms are better than your feeble, elderly ones.” He dodges the punch his brother throws his way. The sloshing of the water makes his feet a little unsteady, but he does not drop it. 

Ganju wakes up with his soulmate’s laughter still ringing in his ears. He lurches forward like Kuukaku has slapped him on the back, chest shuddering as he tries to get a grip on himself, and tells himself he will not cry again today. It is too easy to see his own brother, though, tall and proud in his shihakusho, even prouder with Miyako at his side as he climbed up the ranks. He pictures violet eyes and shoves off from the ground, ignores the protesting grunts Bonnie makes when his absence causes her roll onto her side. 

He paints a second coat on the fence. His mind goes carefully blank the way it does on days Kuukaku can’t stop finding things to explode about, on nights when he can’t sleep and wishes he could talk to Kaien, on afternoons when he wanders too close to the nicer districts and people start to recognize his features. The brushstrokes are easy to get lost in. The rhythm is simple. 

Paint jar sealed and fence drying, he and Bonnie trek down to the stream to fill his gourd and wash the paint brush. Ganju comes to staring into the stream. He can see straight to the rocks at the bottom. It is a good stream, half the reason his sister chose this place when they moved the last time, and he knows the water will be cool and clean. He dips his hands in. The tiny paint flecks on his fingers won’t fade until he gets a good bar of soap from the house, but the chill helps bring his mind back. He dries his hands on his vest, tucks the brushes into his pack, and throws a leg over Bonnie. The ride home brings the rest of him back. 

He enters the house with a new determination. There’s still time. His soulmate ( _Hanatarou_ , he thinks, with a swoop in his stomach that makes things feel more personal) has obviously just arrived to the Soul Society, doesn’t know what the Shinigami are like. Hell, his brother might not know either, if he’s only just graduated! All he’s gotta do is track ‘em down, explain the situation, fall in love, and boom, happily ever after. No problem. If he starts searching his dreams hard enough, he should be able to find some clue about where his soulmate is, exactly, and no one knows these streets better than him! 

* * *

Hanatarou is laying in a field of tall grass, a nest of bright green blades bent beneath him, even more towering all around him. The sky he looks up at is grey and white, churning clouds and the promise of rain. The looming threat doesn’t seem to bother him. He certainly isn’t in any hurry to get up. 

There is noise and movement in the grass to his left. Any logical person would reach forward and check to see what is coming, or perhaps tense up in case they need to run, but he doesn’t move an inch. His muscles stay just as slack and he feels a reluctant smile tug at his lips. Despite any panic Hanatarou feels, his soulmate, Ganju, is unworried. It seems to be a recurring theme in his dreams. 

A snout emerges from the grass and Hanatarou relaxes as his soulmate laughs under the assault of an affectionate boar. “Couldn’t stay away for long, could ya?” he asks, bring his wide palms up to capture Bonnie’s face and press a kiss to her forehead. 

She breathes hot and dank in his face, snuffling and stamping a single hoof by his side; he shakes her head a bit, releases it and lets her drop half her weight over his chest. The way it makes his lungs too tight to get a proper breath is overshadowed by the comfort she brings. Even Hanatarou has gotten used to her weight and size when he dreams of the big, beautiful boar and her sisters. Two thick arms wrap around her shoulders. Her legs are stretched out behind her, two little stumps and a swinging tail in between, her snout pressed against the underside of his chin. His soulmate is more comfortable with Bonnie than anyone else. 

What Hanatarou feels, swelling in his chest and pushing back all that sorrow he shoulders in his sleep, is more comfortable than anything he has in his waking hours, too. 

“Hanatarou graduated today, Bon.” 

It is always startling, to feel your own name come out of your mouth, to feel someone else’s feelings about you. The tired bite behind his name was not startling. He has heard it before, would hear it for a long time coming, it seems. Oh, Hanatarou hasn’t yet been brave enough to find his soulmate, in the sprawling realm of the dead, but he has picked up enough to know the situation isn’t simple. 

He knows that Ganju has something personal against the Shinigami, hates them with too much fire in his eyes and thunder in his chest for it to over something casual. He knows that Ganju tried to find him, tried to communicate with him for years. 

(To be fair, in his living life, Hanatarou could neither read nor write, and even now, the sloppy lines of _Shiba_ _Ganju_ that his soulmate absently spends his time drawing in the dust when he should be sweeping are difficult to make out. He has strong, steady hands, but not nearly enough patience for small things like writing or mending. In his living life, he hadn’t known his soulmate was dead – just thought he lived in a much nicer town, far away. The streets of the Rukongai and their inhabitants hardly look different from when they appeared, after all. In his living life, he didn’t have the choice between searching the dusty streets to find his soulmate or spending a few more hours studying so that he may follow Seinosuke into the Seireitei as quickly as possible. He has that choice here, and he chooses his brother. He chooses time together lost and not time together not yet found. 

To be fair, in his afterlife, he hadn’t really known the price of that choice.) 

There is something swallowing him up that feels echoed between the two of them. It is consuming and sad. It is heavier than Bonnie and the clouds and Hanatarou’s scrawny arms after hours of zanjutsu drills. 

“I bet he’s already applied to the Fourth, following that smart-ass brother of his.” 

He has; he is. Ganju knows him well. 

“Prolly gonna get a seat soon with how clever he is, move up the ranks chasing that smart-ass Seinosuke, watch his brother make it to the Fourth or maybe the Third seat, or hell, Lieutenant if the bastard ever learns to get along with his Zanpakuto, and then Hantarou’s gonna watch them drag his body back to the barracks, tell ‘im sorry for ‘is loss, and leave ‘im to bury his brother.” 

There was a little bit of empowerment and pride bubbling up in him when Ganju started speaking, but the specific, sharp direction it took squashed any of that. He wants to be a seated officer, of course, wants to see his brother move up the ranks and master his shikai. His soulmate would know that, does know that. 

“Just like Kaien,” he sighs, and hugs Bonnie tightly. 

Hanatarou wakes up before he can figure out if it started to rain or if Ganju is crying, but he certainly is, either way. His face is in his hands and he is remembering the loss of his brother. It is the clearest memory from his living life, clearer than Aiko’s smile and Hasu’s babbling and Mother’s rough hands. It has stayed the sharpest memory in his mind in both lives. 

_Kaien_ , he thinks, and knows that name. 

It is the brother Ganju speaks of only when no one else is around, when only the girls and the grass can hear him. He’s never said anything about Kaien being a Shinigami, but he also never spoke of his death in specifics, either. 

He wraps his arms around his knees and misses the crushing weight of Bonnie. He misses the sound of Ganju singing the songs Hanatarou would have long forgotten by now if he didn’t, the ones he sang to Hasu as Mother sang to him. He is crying and choking on his sobs in the way he does when he can’t stop crying, quiet and practiced. He misses someone he has never met. It is heavy and it hurts.

Hanatarou cries himself out, thinking of a second death for Seinosuke and the tree-trunk arms he couldn’t wrap around himself when awake. His eyes and throat are sore. He fumbles around his tiny room for the water gourd he never remembers to empty, splashes a bit of the warm water on his face and drinks the rest. It drips onto the front of his shihakusho and he stares down at it blankly. The Shinigami standard wear still feels unfamiliar to him. It still feels like too much fabric, too little weight. He'll probably be tripping over his own uniform for the rest of eternity.

He removes his obi, folds it up, and strips off the rest. The day must have been so exciting that he forgot to take them off before he collapsed on his futon. His zanpakuto still leans up against the wall by the door, where he had put it when he returned. 

Crawling back under the blanket, he turns his face towards the little window above him and looks to the sky. Thick, rolling clouds pass overhead. It isn’t raining, not yet. 


	6. Yuzu I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t know a lot. Some things don’t make sense.”
> 
> Yuzu forces a smile, tries to joke a little bit. “They’re dreams. How much sense do they make, ever? I dreamed about feeding a white snake last night, and I was feeding it persimmons! How crazy!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuzu is sweet and fun, but I like to imagine her clever side is hidden from a lot of people. She's always around. She's privy to a lot of information. She's trusted with a lot of responsibilities. It makes for an interesting character.
> 
> Fun world building in this chapter! I like my soulmate AUs to be a little different, but still parallel life. "Default" sexuality is pansexual, not heterosexual, though any deviation from the "norm" is still considered, well, queer!

Yuzu knows that the way she feels is different, and while it may not be frowned-upon it is definitely side-eyed, so she doesn’t say anything. Well, she doesn’t say anything much. It seems like every time she does, she is interrupted or misinterpreted. She is used to being talked over at the dinner table sometimes, when Karin is particularly excited or Ichigo is bickering with their father, but this isn’t the same. Talk of these feelings shouldn’t be slipped in where there’s a free moment in the conversation, not casually thrown out there, but carefully planned and executed.

Maybe it’s because she usually tries to talk to Karin about her feelings, and Karin isn’t really good at talking, or all that good with feelings, either, now that she thinks about it. Yuzu is the emotional one. Yuzu is the crybaby. She’s the most expressive of them all – excluding their father. Both her twin and her brother are a lot less adept with their emotions; they usually bottle them up and let the cap blow off, spouting off and leaving a mess in their wake.

Karin isn’t very good at cleaning, either, so Yuzu handles that, too.

She is sick of handling this secret, though, and so she tries again. Her fourth attempt, but who’s counting? Not Yuzu. She keeps track of the bills and the phones and the patients; she doesn’t have time to keep up with her own problems. She holds her breath until she feels as though she will grow gills.

“Karin?”

They are eleven, sitting at the table and doing their homework. Ichi-nii is sprawled out on the floor, scowl trained on some new issue of manga, pages flipping at a steady pace. She looks down at her essay and sighs. The noise catches her sister’s attention and she turns to Yuzu with a cocked brow and the end of a pencil in her mouth.

“Whassit?” she asks around the eraser.

“I don’t...”

She shoots a furtive glance at their brother, but he is too consumed in his manga to notice. Karin follows her gaze. Without her sister staring at her, it is a little easier to speak. It shouldn’t be hard at all. Of everyone in her life, Karin is the least likely to conform to any standards, let alone judge someone else for failing to do so. But she knows most people don’t care either way! She shouldn’t feel so strongly about this, either, and _yet_ -

Her brown eyes flit back down to the nearly finished essay on the table and she wills words to come out of her mouth, rather than her pencil.

“I don’t think I want a boy soulmate,” she whispers, shame and hope and confusion welling up inside her all at once.

“Don’t blame you, there,” Karin says with a snort. The sound draws Yuzu’s gaze back up, and she sees her sister rolling her eyes, her brother with a finger shoved up his nose.

She’s been misunderstood. Again.

* * *

She is thirteen, now, and she has tried eleven different times to tell her sister how she feels. Somehow, it seems she is the only one of them that didn’t inherit their father’s thick head. She is thirteen, now, and the only one of her siblings who hasn’t started to dream. Karin doesn’t know that she knows, and Ichi-nii thinks he’s being secretive with that pretty Rukia girl, but she is a lot more observant than they think. She pays attention. She handles things.

Karin has never had trouble sleeping before, never tossed and turned for hours at night, speaking unfamiliar names. Ichigo has never looked at someone, apart from the twins, as softly as he does that girl. She is glad for him, at the least. He doesn’t seem nearly as conflicted as Karin. He smiles a bit more freely, now, and she hears them arguing on the phone or something, sometimes, but not in a bad way. Sort of like the way he bickers with Isshin, like the way Karin bickers with the both of them. Fond and irritated, both.

Not Karin, though. She is starting to look a little haggard with the sleep loss. Yuzu notices the tossing and turning right after their birthday, and isn’t sure how long it has gone on before that, and in the next six months, Karin only seems to struggle more with herself and her dreams. She wishes Karin would come to her and talk about things. She won’t push, though, until things start to get too bad. Her sister doesn’t like to be prompted into anything. It takes a careful amount of written chore lists and casual hints to get things done around the house with Karin. Emotional exercises are even more difficult.

“ _Massumo_...” Karin says into her pillow, legs shifting and arm coming up over her face. The moonlight streaming through the window shows the glint of sweat on her skin. She moves as if irritated. Her face is hidden, but Yuzu can practically hear her jaw working.

It is likely she’s trying to say Matsumoto, which Yuzu hears a lot. She hasn’t heard the names of their classmates – _Kaneda, Hashigami, Miyuki_ – in months. Now she hears strange names she doesn’t know – _Momo, Ukitake, Shiba_ – and weird things about drills and paperwork and hollow somethings. Yuzu wants to ask, she does, but it seems like Karin has just as many questions as she does.

“Hiding things,” her sister snarls, clearly enough that she thinks for a moment she is awake. Karin flops over on her other side, though, shining face bared to Yuzu’s sight. She _is_ grinding her teeth.

“For,” Karin interrupts herself with a sighing snore, “ _Quincy_?”

“Quincy?”

Karin doesn’t answer her, of course, and she cannot answer herself. She’s never heard the name before. Not in her day to day life or Karin’s suddenly unfamiliar sleep-talking topics.

“...an idiot.”

Yes, she certainly feels like one. Not even her one-sided conversations can go as planned, lately. She sighs and rolls over onto her side. The wall breathes her sighs back to her until she falls asleep, arms wrapped around Melon, eyes closed tight. Her mind is the last thing to relax.

The bridge she is sitting on is soft, the wooden posts behind her as nice as an overstuffed sofa, and she does not want to get up. Karin and Ichi-nii are playing, maybe tag, maybe just chasing and smacking each other when they get close enough, and it looks like Rukia is running around with them, too. Her mouth is wide open in a smile, bunny ears on her head, short legs carrying her fast away from Ichigo’s reaching hand. Yuzu doesn’t mind watching them play. She is content to sit here. Besides, if she wanted to get up, she would have to put her shoes on. The tall snow boots she wore to the park were difficult to lace and unlace, so she would wait until they had to leave to put them on again.

Her father flops down next to her, suddenly, right in the middle of the footpath of the bridge in this lovely park. He props his head up, elbow jutting out like the edges of his grin.

“Well, how’s the day been, my dear? Park living up to your standards?”

“I’m glad we picked this one!” she says, smiling brightly.

“It’s nice to get away from all the cold weather at the clinic,” he agrees.

“Yeah, it looks like they might even get some sun!” She points at the trio playing in the grass, all red noses and sweaty foreheads. Rukia’s bunny ears are still perky, happy. Ichigo and Karin have ditched their heavy coats on the red rails of the bridge. They overlap, black and white, stark together and against the painted wood. She should take hers off, as well. The bright yellow doesn’t catch the sun as much as Ichigo’s pitch black coat, but it is still overwarm on a sunny day.

“I knew I should have made them put on sunblock,” she mutters to herself, which makes her father chuckle. “They wouldn’t have listened, anyway.”

A shout of laughter interrupts them, and Karin is yelling some unfamiliar name again, adding a rank onto it, like they are playing a military game now. Yuzu is glad not to be playing, then. She doesn’t like to fight. Then day is too nice to spend it angry, or pretending to be, even.

“Are you ready to join the fun?”

Yuzu shakes her head, grin unchanging. “I’m fine over here.” She tilts her head to the side, eyelashes so close to the wooden post they almost brush the red paint. The sound of the brook beneath them is soothing and the sunlight is warm. What does she want with the games?

“Scared you’re gonna break the rules?”

The warmth is gone and the laughter is louder than earlier. She looks at her dad, unsure, though his tone is teasing and his face is open, happy. So, why does she feel like she’s in trouble? Yuzu swallows nervously. Ichigo and Karin’s coats look so warm and she is so cold. She wants to pick one up and put it over her own, but that would look silly. It wouldn’t fit.

She tries to swallow again and has to clear her throat instead. “Sorry?”

“It’s not as bad as you make it out to be, Yuzu,” he says, softly, and the serious tone in his words rings through her head like a warning bell. “You’re allowed to want something a certain way.”

Her tongue feels too thick. She opens her lips and wants to dip her face into the brook below, suck a mouthful of water in to erase the desert-dryness of her mouth. Instead, she fists her hands in the sleeves of her coat, hugging herself. “But I...” Yuzu doesn’t know what to say.

“Just ask, darling. You never ask for anything, so why is asking for this one little thing so hard?”

She wakes up slow, blinking in the sunlight and stretching her arms and legs. It feels like she was curled around poor Melon all night. Her alarm isn’t set to go off for another half hour or so, and she lays on her stomach staring at it for a few minutes, mind fuzzy and slipping back towards sleep. The sunlight feels so nice that she throws off her blankets and lets it seep into her rumpled pajamas and strips of bared skin.

She thinks to take off her coat, and is confused when it isn’t there. _It's yellow_ , she thinks. But there is no coat there. Her dream comes back to her, in a hazy way, the details of the yellow coat and red bridge, Rukia’s bunny ears, the sound of laughter, a cold shock in the sunlight. She dismisses the dream. She thinks about buying a yellow coat this year. Hers has gotten a little short in the sleeves in the last couple of years, and the inside pocket is torn. Yuzu could mend it, of course, but maybe a new one would be nice.

Her father wouldn’t say no, if she asked for a new coat. It is a little thing and the wind that finds its way through the city streets can be chilling. Working in the clinic already makes getting sick too easy. A nice yellow coat could help stave off the cold.

* * *

It won’t be cold for months, but she keeps an eye out for a yellow coat, anyway. There’s a mustard colored one with a nice cut in the fall preview of a shopping catalogue she likes, and she mulls over it long enough for Ichigo and Rukia to sneak down the stairs and out the clinic doors, eyes trained on the pages and head cocked in interest. She doesn’t see anything of substance. Another catches her eye when she and Karin are walking to school; the shop window reflects her sister’s exhausted expression and she does not pause long enough to pursue the purchase. Yuzu sees a flash of yellow when she is out with Tatsuki and Karin for lunch. It is just a girl with bright, messy blonde hair. She starts to wonder if she is too preoccupied looking for a coat from a dream.

Karin’s sleeping problems worry her enough that she opens her mouth, says something forceful and forward for once. She worries about her family all the time. It is even worse when they give her a reason.

“If you would talk about your dreams,” she says and hands Karin a plastic measuring cup to dry off, “they might not bother you so much.”

“My dreams are fine,” Karin says, too quickly. Her hands are tight around the cup and she hasn’t bothered to pick up the dish towel.

“Karin.” It comes out as a sigh; her sister’s mouth turns down at the corner Yuzu can see. “You can tell me about them, you know. And your dreams.”

She watches as Karin closes her eyes and deflates. Her shoulders drop, forearms coming to rest on the counter as she simply sits down the measuring cup, still dripping. Yuzu takes her hands out of the water. She pats them dry on her apron.

“I don’t know a lot. Some things don’t make sense.”

Yuzu forces a smile, tries to joke a little bit. “They’re dreams. How much sense do they make, ever? I dreamed about feeding a white snake last night, and I was feeding it persimmons! How crazy!”

Her mouth tips up into a bit of smile at Yuzu’s small laugh, and it feels something like victory. “Good point.”

“So, tell me about them!”

“He’s very...serious, does a lot of...homework, I guess.” Karin’s brow furrows, like she’s the one doing homework. “He doesn’t joke around a lot. From what I’ve seen, though, he’s smart. _Strong_. Ambitious, too, maybe.”

There is a quiet marvel in Karin’s tone when she says _strong_ , like when she’s talking about Tatsuki, but even more surprised. She wonders if she’s seen her soulmate fighting, or handling something tough, tougher than sleepless nights and a full workout when you do manage a few hours of rest. A strong soulmate suits Karin. Some part of her wonders about her sister's soulmate being a boy, because she is always picking fights with them, but she doesn’t really like girls that much either. Karin doesn’t like too many people, regardless of gender.

Yuzu switches her train of thought and asks another question. “Do you know his name?”

She hesitates, but answers, “Toushirou.”

“Aw! That’s so fitting, if he’s strong, smart, and ambitious.”

“I guess,” Karin mutters, reaching for the half dry measuring cup as her cheeks go pink. She dries it off and holds her hand out for another dish. Yuzu plunges her hands in the water and starts washing again. It is the end of the conversation. At least she managed to have this conversation. It went better than she expected, and her smile is less forced as she starts humming to herself. This is something she can help with: Yuzu is an excellent listener. If that’s what Karin needs, she is more than happy to oblige.

She would feel awful if Karin thought she couldn’t confide in her. They are twins, sisters, best friends. It has always been them against the world, in a both a smaller and much, much bigger sense than it simply being the Kurosakis together, in the world. They are supposed to deal with things together.

They climb into bed, hair damp and yawns echoing between them, and she pulls both Melon and Cookie close, the extra comfort needed after the emotionally charged evening. Her eyes start to droop right away but Yuzu fights the urge to sleep for a while. She waits until Karin is snoring lightly, spread out like a starfish with an arm and a leg dangling off one side of her bed. She waits until Karin mumbles a bit but nothing else. She doesn’t toss, flip over every few minutes, or make faces in her sleep for the first hour, and Yuzu lets her eyes fall closed at last. She sleeps deeply, dreams of picking flowers with her siblings under a sky full of fluffy clouds.


	7. Ichigo/Rukia II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t think too much about where Rukia’s at, or why she’s avoiding him even in their dreams now. He just tilts his head back to catch the sun on his face, shifts the books to his other shoulder, keeps his feet moving. The twins sprint the last half-block, disappearing into the clinic doors, since they’re the closest, and surprise him by waiting for him to catch up in the lobby. Ichigo smiles. He goes back to the kitchen, sparkling clean, which Isshin is quick to start peacocking around about, and dumps the books on the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how food became a major theme in this story, but it has. That probably won't change much. Let me know what you think, and if there's any particular character/pairing POVs you'd like to see! I've got quite a few planned, but love hearing what yall think!

He realizes something is wrong after four nights in a row of dreaming his own dreams, no hint of unfamiliar faces with their noses in the air. Ichigo should have noticed something is wrong sooner, but he has a lot going on, aright? His dad is acting weirder than usual, hollows are still popping up left and right, and then there’s that thing with Chad and Ishida going on – and boy, he tries not to think about that too much. And! He still has to keep up with his damn homework! It’s a lot. 

But he should have been paying better attention. None of the excuses he’s telling himself stick like they should, and he lays awake, thinking hard. 

The morning dawns bright and annoying, with his dad throwing his bedroom door open and attempting to launch himself at Ichigo. He startles at the sound of his door crashing open. It gives him just enough time to react to his dad’s incoming weight, rolling right off the side of his bed – and managing to catch his shoulder on the nightstand, damn it – to avoid him. Ichigo huffs a laugh as he hits the rug and his dad bounces on the empty bed where he slams into it, looking put out. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he starts to get up and push his dad out. 

“I’m awake, old man, so lemme get dressed in peace,” he grumbles. 

Ichigo easily ignores the loud protests and shuts the door firmly with his dad on the other side. Forehead pressed against the wood, he sighs, attempts to recount his dreams. There was something about Tatsuki and hitting the mat, face first, too many times in a row to be real... 

He opens the closet door. Takes in the folded blankets, neatly stacked with a pillow on top, and the folded pajamas at the foot of the makeshift bed. Ichigo picks them up, mixes them with his dirty laundry, and throws them in the hamper on his way downstairs. Yuzu hums in front of the refrigerator, door wide open and hands on her hips. He ruffles her hair as he passes to get a glass of water, drinks it sitting next to Karin as she snores, facedown, on the table. His mind keeps going back to his dreams, from last night and the few nights before. 

Rukia hasn’t been sleeping. At least, not at the same time, which was strange. She’s been gone the last couple of mornings, too, and maybe a little quieter than normal, now that he thinks about it... 

“Pay attention, son!” 

He flinches back from the megaphone-volume voice in his ear, knocking into Karin’s chair and making her jerk awake. Ichigo throws his elbow out and catches his dad in the throat. Only satisfyingly pained, choking noises come from the carpet, so he turns to Yuzu. 

“What’s he trying to say?” 

“I was asking you to set the table, but you didn’t seem to hear me,” Yuzu said over the sounds of her cooking and their father. She bustles around with a spatula in hand, apron fluttering around her legs and she moved. There’s got to be three or four different dishes going, between the stove, oven, and the rice cooker that beeps right as Yuzu steps up to it. He wonders when she became so competent, and doesn’t dwell on the familiar pang of guilt he gets when he thinks too hard about her role in the house. 

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he says, stepping over Isshin to do as she asks. It takes him no time, since he doesn’t have to work around a sleeping Karin, and he steps into the kitchen, hand on the back on his neck, when he’s finished. “Do you need any help in here, Yuzu?” 

She stops what’s she’s doing – chopping up green onions – and turns to him in surprise. Damn, if that doesn’t make him feel like shit. The smile she sends him makes it both better and worse. When’s the last time someone offered to help Yuzu, in the kitchen? Sure, they all pitched in and did the dishes and whatever a lot, because it wasn’t fair to make her cook and clean up, but he couldn’t remember the last time someone actually helped her cook, more than prep a little, or pitch in for big, celebratory meals. 

“That would be wonderful. Could you check the salmon? I’ve got to top the rice with natto and eggs, but once that’s all done, breakfast will be ready.” 

“Right, no problem.” He steps up to the pan, stares at the sizzling salmon, and abruptly remembers he knows very, very little about cooking. Ichigo reaches for the spatula hesitantly. He darts a glance at Yuzu, but she’s already moved on from the cutting board nearby and is filling bowls with rice, her back turned. 

He doesn’t burn the fish, and is thankful for that when Yuzu gently bosses him around as they prepare everything for the table, her smile brighter than ever. He is sent to the table first, with three dishes held between his two hands, and finds the balancing act much easier to deal with than the cooking. Isshin has pried himself off the floor to sit across from Karin. He bangs his hands on the table like a kid, and Ichigo fights the urge to smack him back into the floor, which he _knows_ the old man knows, by the teasing glint in his eyes. 

Yuzu comes in with even more food in her hands and he has to make way for it to fit on the table, so Ichigo forgets about his dad’s antics soon enough. The Kurosakis make it through breakfast without anything thrown, and hardly any raised voices, so he counts that as a win. He bullies Isshin into doing the dishes, offers to take Karin and Yuzu down to the library, since he had a practice test to take that morning. Yuzu agrees easily; she has a few books to return and even more she wants to check out, since the library has a much more extensive cookbook collection than the smaller bookstores nearby. Even Karin seems interested, once he reminds her the newest edition of her favorite sports manga should have come in by now. 

He spends the morning with his sisters, trying to keep them smiling and laughing, much to the frustration of the librarians. Ichigo tries to make sure they feel like normal kids. It’s easy, with Karin, to hand her the right issue of manga and let her go nuts over it, but he steers Yuzu towards the novels twice before she actually picks one up to check it out. They run into Tatsuki and Orihime on the way out, and he hears the girls making plans for lunch as he approaches the group, test scores in hand. 

“How’d you do, Ichi-nii?” 

“Pretty good. Only missed a couple of questions, and I should do even better with some more practice.” 

Tatsuki peeks over his shoulder, groans when she sees the practice test for their math class, and says, “Let me know when you’ll be getting that practice in. I sure could use it!” 

“Oh, Tatsuki-chan, I told you, my carrot-and-soybean sorting method works great with these problems.” He fights back a grin at the clearly determined look on Orihime’s face, as if they’ve had this argument a few times already, and she has prepared a better defense, this time. “I can show you after we go to the market, it’s very simple once you’ve-” 

“Looking at the numbers as carrots and soybeans only makes it harder for me, Orihime, I’m sorry. I guess I don’t have the same type of creative way of looking at things as you do,” she laughed. 

Karin’s eyebrows are near her hairline, though Yuzu is looking between them with fondness on her face. He just shakes his head and herds the twins out the door with a promise of a study session with Tatsuki soon. Orihime’s stuttered goodbyes follow them out the door. Ichigo shoulders the bag of books, test scores in his pocket and sisters running ahead of him, starts to walk home. He follows after the twins steadily. They complain when they have to wait on him, but he tells them they can carry their own damn books and they giggle, darting ahead again. 

He doesn’t think too much about where Rukia’s at, or why she’s avoiding him even in their dreams now. He just tilts his head back to catch the sun on his face, shifts the books to his other shoulder, keeps his feet moving. The twins sprint the last half-block, disappearing into the clinic doors, since they’re the closest, and surprise him by waiting for him to catch up in the lobby. Ichigo smiles. He goes back to the kitchen, sparkling clean, which Isshin is quick to start peacocking around about, and dumps the books on the table. 

* * *

“Oh! Rukia-chan, I’m so glad I found you. Ichigo has been looking for you all morning!” 

Rukia glances up at Orihime, sees those smiling brown eyes and the worried furrow of her brow. She slides her bookmark in place, holding back a sigh, and brushes herself off when she stands. A smile comes to her lips, too easily, though she knows it does not reach her eyes. On better days, she is much more convincing than this. “I _told_ him that I would be studying in the courtyard before class,” she says. “That boy needs to clean his ears out, I swear.” 

Orihime’s head cocks to the side, and Rukia knows she wants to dispute that but is far too polite to do so. She feels her shoulders relax a little when the redhead lets it go. “I guess he didn’t hear you, after all! He seemed pretty worried about where you might be, actually, even though I told him that you’re very good with directions. You’ve never gotten lost on the way to my house, even once! And you showed me that shortcut to Uryuu’s house, too.” 

“That’s right. I rarely get lost, and it certainly doesn’t happen at school,” Rukia scoffs. 

They meet up with the others, grouped in the hallway around Ichigo, orbiting him as the planets do the sun. He eyes her with annoyance, scowling harder than usual. His look conveys that he isn’t letting this go. She prepares a few offhanded lies for the conversation he’ll force later, mind whirring around the mostly likely way to get him to ignore her strange behavior for a few more days. Rukia still isn’t sure that Urahara will open the gates for her. He seems reluctant to let her return on her own, but she knows that her argument is more than convincing. She knows he does not want them coming to get her, coming to his territory, any more than she wants them to find Ichigo. 

Her attention is diverted from the problem when she follows Ichigo, Tatsuki, Orihime, and Mizurio into the classroom. Keigo bounds over to them with waving arms and an open-mouthed smile. Ichigo shoves him away, takes his seat, props his chin up to stare out the window moodily. Seconds later, Keigo captures all their attention when he greets the last pair of their friends to arrive. 

“Gooood morning Chad, Ishida!” he calls. Most of them look towards Keigo for the volume of his voice alone. Ichigo, though, hasn’t been drawn from his thoughts. Rukia pushes away the flash of guilt she feels. “You two sure have been walking to school together a lot. I didn’t know you lived so close to each other!” 

That got Ichigo’s attention, and his scowl turns into a full-blown glower within seconds. She smirks at the waves of annoyance rolling off of him. His best friend’s soulmate revelation had not inspired any trust between Ichigo and Ishida, and he has taken every opportunity since given to him to pick at Ishida about his secretive nature. 

Rukia understands, all too well, Ishida’s motives in staying silent. She tried and failed to keep her own soulmate a secret, and while she cannot bring herself to regret anything that’s happened since she met Ichigo, she knows the need to protect her soulmate. She knows the need to keep secrets, to keep her distance. She hasn’t voiced these opinions to Ichigo, of course. He understands, too, though only when applied to himself. 

"We don’t.” Chad doesn’t elaborate further, even with the prompting look from Mizurio. 

"Then why do you walk together?” Keigo asks. 

"Uryuu started showing up outside my apartment one day, and now we walk together.” 

She half expects Ishida to lose his composure at that, with the way all of their friends – and a few stray classmates – turn to gawk at him with varying degrees of surprise. She and Ichigo had talked about their new habit of appearing together, though no explanation had been given before now. It does seem an unusual gesture on Ishida’s part. She knows he feels rather guilty about the whole thing, had gathered that much before they had a conversation about it, even, and thinks walking Chad to school is a rather sweet way to attempt to make up for everything. 

His expression doesn’t let on that he’s embarrassed, and Rukia is impressed. The way he raises his eyebrows at the looks given to him, meets each one with a cold, sapphire gaze, reminds her of her brother. Her heart twists painfully. She grasps onto the continuing conversation desperately, unable to think of Byakuya in such a public space. 

“Oh?” Ichigo prompts, grin devious. Her heart twists, again, in fondness, though no less painfully. “And why would Ishida want to start walking you to school, all of a sudden?” 

Chad’s stoic demeanor cracks a little, then, as he looks down at Ishida with his lips twisted doubtfylly, instead of answering right away. Ishida does not hesitate, and Rukia allows herself a small smile, as he pushes up his glasses and tells Keigo, “Walking one’s soulmate to school is common courtesy, and I’ve utilized the time to get to know Yasutora better.” 

Half of their friends immediately delve into a mess of exclamations and questions. Ishida looks on unflappably, even glaring at a few of the gawking strangers over his friends’ shoulders, though an endearing flush creeps over Chad’s face. She exchanges a look with Ichigo – his impatient, hers amused – and is glad that he isn’t too upset with her, if he’s making faces at her behind Ishida’s back. He listens to Ishida’s tale closely, though, and she knows he is judging it with every word. Rukia has heard quite a few rants about the new couple. She finds it cute that he is so upset on Chad’s behalf, though less so when he is around, and clearly very happy with how things have turned out, regardless of how things began between them. Ichigo will likely accept the relationship a bit better with some time, she reminds herself. 

With the way Ishida explains himself, still looking unaffected, to Rukia’s mixed confusion and pleasure, she thinks it may not take as long as Ichigo would like. He silences the questions with a raised hand, pushes his glasses up again. 

“It is true that I have known Yasutora is my soulmate for a while. I was nervous about saying anything, and worried that finding my soulmate while I was still in school would distract me from my studies. After a while, I decided that I would not approach him until after graduation, though I would not deny him if he were to approach me.” He looks away from the crowd, for the first time, fixes his eyes on Chad’s shoulder. A hint of pink appears on his ears and cheeks. Rukia wonders if it is real, or if he is really that accomplished a liar, with time to prepare. Either way, she is as enthralled as the rest of them. “This year, as I began interacting with Yasutora and getting to know him, I knew I could not hide our bond for much longer. I came forward, told him the truth a few weeks ago. We have agreed to stay focused on our studies, though I am relieved we’ll be able to look at universities together.” 

“Oh, Uryuu, of course, you can’t ignore your soulmate because you’re worried about your studies! Besides, Chad is very smart, even if he isn’t number one in the class, like you, but that just proves you shouldn’t have to worry at all!” 

“Chad has assured me of the same thing, Orihime. He is very intelligent, and has the potential to rise even higher in the class ranks with my strict study schedule.” He pushes his glasses up with a satisfactory glint in his eyes, one corner of his mouth raised. Chad looks less than enthused. 

She is distracted from Orihime’s beaming face when a hand rises from the depths of the floor and grips the side of her desk as if it is a lifeline. Keigo emerges, face white, eyes wide. Rukia glances between him and Ichigo, who looks as though his feelings have finally been validated. The smugness is palpable. She sighs. Keigo stands with a single, shaking finger pointed at Chad and Ishida. Finally, a crack appears in Ishida’s facade. 

“Keigo,” Chad says in his rumbling, rarely heard voice. 

Keigo does not listen to the gentle warning in that voice. He apparently does not see the blatant threat in Ishida’s eyes, either. Voice raised, he starts, “Are you seriously telling me-” 

A pair of hands slap over his mouth, one coming from either side, as Tatsuki and Mizurio step forward at the same time to silence their overwhelmed friend. Even Ichigo looks reluctantly grateful to have averted the drawing the attention of the entire class. Orihime goes right back to congratulating Chad; Ishida grinds his teeth and takes deep breaths. 

She is going to miss them all, so very much. 

Miss Ochi enters the room soon after, demanding order from her wayward students and Rukia’s mind. She finds it far too easy to focus on the methodical classwork she endures in the Human Realm. There is some of it she doesn’t grasp that well; she has even found help in study sessions with her friends, when such a thing was so foreign to her at the Academy. She thinks of Renji for a fleeting moment. They have both been Lieutenants for a time now, and she had hoped that would bridge the canyon he saw between them, or perhaps he would think her worthy enough with such a rank, one that she earned without her name. 

One that she earned with Kaien’s blood on her hands, instead. 

Rukia returns her attention to the board at the head of the classroom. Miss Ochi has not stopped speaking, and Rukia has notes to catch up on. She begins to copy them down. She carefully does not look at Ichigo for the rest of the class period, but her mind is made up. She will leave within the week, as long as Urahara can be prepared on such short notice, and she will spare Ichigo as much pain as she can, in the process. It is the least she can do. 

After school, she’ll have to bully Urahara into seeing her side of things. It isn’t the first time. She’s quite combative, and rather accomplished at bullying this specific shop keeper by now.

* * *

“Are you going to tell me why you’ve been acting so weird?” 

Rukia gives him this sideways look, those purple eyes half-lidded and sad, a look that says she could have scripted this argument for him already. He fights the urge to grind his teeth. She’s always looking at him like that. Like she knows how it’s gonna go and he can’t change a damn thing. He hates that look. And the sick feeling it puts in his stomach. 

“I’m afraid that the Soul Society will send someone after me soon.” 

He looks down at her in confusion. Why hadn’t she brought this up sooner, then? “Huh? Like Saido?” 

“No, not like Saido.” She shakes her head, eyes downcast and feet steady. “They’ll send someone stronger to collect me, someone ranked Lieutenant, at the least.” 

“No problem, then. You’re a Lieutenant, and I’ve been killin’ Hollows left and right. Plus, there’s Chad and Uryuu and Orihime, too. Let them send a Lieutenant! We can handle ‘em.” 

A smile steals over her lips at his bravado, but seconds later only the ghost of it remains. He wonders if the other Shinigami are really that strong. He does grit his teeth, now, and regrets not training harder. The Grand Fisher had gotten away, even with Ichigo trying his damnedest to kill the monster. If a lousy Hollow could get away from him, and Shinigami routinely slay Hollows... He should have been doing more to get stronger; he’s known that they would probably send someone else after Rukia before she had the chance to regain all of her powers. She had told him that herself. He should have listened. 

Hindsight is a bitch, he thinks, resigned and angry. He has to do what he can. He has to believe that he and his friends are enough. He has to make Rukia believe that, too. 

“With enough time to train, I think you all could,” she says. He blinks at her, a warm and pleased sort of hope starting to grow in his chest. 

“If we start training even harder now, we’ll need even less time! I’m sure everybody else will be up to it, too, and it could be cool to see the others in action.” 

“Their powers all sound so extraordinary. Ishida is a bit of a marvel to me, to be honest. I read about the Quincies, when I was in the Academy, and how they manipulate reishi around them. I thought it was so fascinating. I mourned that I would never get the chance to see it for myself, since they were all supposed to be a dead race.” 

“Ishida sure is something,” he mumbles, half-teasing. 

“You have to admit that his innovative thinking saved the both of you, and he’s a powerful ally.” 

“A powerful pain in my ass, more like!” 

They fall into the familiar snipe-snarl-snark routine as they finish their walk home. Ichigo barely has to think about it, just responds with an attitude and a smirk that draws Rukia’s eyes to his lips more often than not. He is glad she talked to him so willingly. The cold shoulder treatment wasn’t working for him; he keeps the people he cares about as close as possible, which makes it all the easier to protect them. Ichigo keeps a good eye on his sisters, knows his doofus dad’s schedule by heart, checks up on Chad and Tatsuki on most of the days he doesn’t see them at school. 

He wants Rukia just as close, just as safe. He knows her fears are only tucked away, shelved for the day, so that she can breathe a little easier and drop her shoulders an inch or two. The shadows in her eyes start to go away after they talk, though. Ichigo can’t see them at all after he takes dinner in his room, some clumsy lie about needing to study falling from his lips, but Yuzu doesn’t seem to notice his fumbling. Rukia notices his attention, how he tries to make her laugh. She ends up telling him stories about her Academy days, falling asleep in class and getting thrown to the mat practicing zanjustsu almost as often as Tatsuki threw him down when they were kids, and he has to smother his laughter so no one will come asking what he finds so funny about integers. 

She falls asleep at his side, curled up in his bed where they sit under the window, a lamp placed overhead since she demanded to sit under the stars and he wanted to actually get a bit of studying done. Her small hand is wrapped around his arm. Her fingers are cool, her hair tickling his skin where her head is resting on his shoulder. 

Ichigo can’t focus on studying much longer after that and sits his workbook aside. He thinks to move Rukia to her own bed, like he has Yuzu and Karin a million times when they passed out on the couch, his legs, in the floor, the car. She curls too easily into his arms, when he starts to pick her up. She feels too cold to leave alone. She has been to distant, for him to want her any farther than this. 

He falls asleep on his side, one arm around Rukia’s tiny waist and the other curled under his head. She holds his arm with both hands. It is the last thing he thinks about before sleep overtakes him. His eyes are heavy, mind exhausted from everything he’s been overthinking. 

The dream comes to him first as a muddle of his thoughts and feelings from the precipice of sleep, the cool feel of Rukia’s skin against his, the relief at her closeness. He is holding her, and it is cold.

The dream solidifies like water to ice, liquid to slush to solid, and he realizes the woman in his arms is cold and small statured and regal but she is not Rukia. 

He looks around, surprised, takes a step back as he unwraps his arms from around this stranger. She looks at him like Rukia, weirdly enough, sad and knowing and infuriating. Ichigo scratches his head. He is surrounded by ice. It rains down from the sky, small enough that it seems like snowfall, until it pelts his skin, stinging a little. It covers the ground, where he stands in his waraji, and he realizes he is wearing his shihakusho, the light robes no match for the cold. It encases the ruins of the buildings around him, little more than foundations and the very bases of walls, glass and metal and concrete all sheeted with shining ice. 

“Hello, Kurosaki Ichigo. I’ve been very interested in meeting you. I am surprised that you’ve come to me of your own violation, without any help from Lady Rukia.” 

The ice starts to fall harder. He tilts his head down, so that he can look at this woman a little better, and the hail won’t reach his eyes. “Who are you?”

He’s definitely never seen her before. He’s not sure she’s human, too ethereal and beautiful. Maybe she’s a spirit. She’s so pale, her skin even paler than Ishida’s. Her hair is snow white, and so is the intricately embroidered kimono she wears. Her skin is cold. Ichigo can remember the almost burning coldness that radiated from her when he realized that she wasn’t Rukia. Definitely not human, then. 

“You aren’t yet strong enough to know this, though Lady Rukia believes that you could be, with time.” 

He wants to snap at her for calling him weak. The mention of Rukia, again, because he said something about Rukia helping him earlier, he remembers, stops him. Do they know each other? He looks around for Rukia and only sees frozen ruins. The rest of her words register and he wants to pull his hair out at all this talk about time. “I don’t know how much time I have!” 

Her eyes, as pale as the rest of her, as despondent in silver as they are purple, soften. “Not as much as you need, I fear.” She reaches up, sticks her freezing hand to the side of his face like a gesture of comfort, of affection. The hail is falling harder, stinging turning to pain as he stood there with this woman he didn’t know, who had eyes that he knew too well. “You’ve already exceeded all of her expectations, dear Kurosaki. Your strength is not to be disregarded; your determination is not to be ignored. You have saved her so many times. 

“I must thank you, for that. Though I am caught between the two of you, for the time being, and cannot properly speak with Lady Rukia, I know how grateful she is to you, Kurosaki Ichigo. I know how much she cares for you. 

“Lady Rukia is honorable and strong, in her own right. She will protect you at all costs, as you’ve protected her.” 

Ichigo wakes up with a stinging cold cheek and empty arms. He throws his blankets off, heart pounding, and throws open the door to his closet, and then his bathroom in a desperate attempt to find Rukia somewhere nearby. Kon points out what he already knows. She’s gone.


End file.
